gatherings in the Champ-de-Mars were on occasion of military reviews and horse-races.

In 1848, on the 22d of May, the Fête of Concord was celebrated with great pomp. The Moniteur alluded to the occasion thus:

"This solemnity was celebrated with an eclat enhanced by the magnificent weather. Under so clear a sky, and surrounded by so many joyful countenances, how was it possible to experience any feelings but those of love, conciliation and harmony? What struck us, especially, was the attitude, so full of enthusiasm and confidence, of the vast concourse of people that crowded the Champ-de-Mars; cries, a thousand times repeated, of Vive la République! Vive la République Démocratique! Vive l'Assemblée Nationale! broke out, in formidable chorus, every instant, as if to proclaim the respect of the people for the institutions which they have adopted, and their invincible repugnance to every retrograde or reactionary idea."

To the foregoing must be added the gigantic military fête on the 10th of May, 1852, called the Fête of Eagles, that is, the distribution of eagles to all the regiments of the army. A cock had been adopted as symbol of the first republic, owing either to an etymological misconception of the word Gallia, or to an intended pun on it. The emperor adopted the Roman eagle; the Bourbons brought back the three fleurs de lys; and in 1830 the cock was restored. Louis Napoleon, when president for ten years, restored the imperial eagle. It must be owned the cock looked very much as our turkey would have looked had we adopted Franklin's humorous proposition of selecting our native and respectable turkey, instead of our fine native eagle.

What feast will be celebrated on the same spot next? Whatever it may be, probably it will be nothing intrinsically different from the last.

CHAPTER XXIX.

ADVANTAGES OF INSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT, FARTHER

CONSIDERED.

THERE are some additional observations suggested by the subject of institutional self-government and by that of the institution in general, which have been deferred in order to avoid an interruption of the general argument, and to which it is necessary now to turn our attention.

It seems to me a symptomatic fact that the term People has at no period, so far as I am acquainted with the domestic history of England, become in politics a term of reproach, not even in her worst periods. On the contrary, the word People has always been surrounded with dignity, and when Chatham was called "The people's minister," it was intended by those who gave him this name as a great honor. It was far different on the continent. In French, in German and in all the continental languages with which I am acquainted, the corresponding words sank to actual terms of contempt. The word Peuple was used in France, before the first revolution, by the higher classes, in a disdainful and stigmatizing sense, and often as equivalent with canaille—that term which played so fearful a part in the sanguinary drama of the revolution, and which Napoleon purposely used, in order emphatically to express that he was or wished to be considered the man of the people, when he said somewhat soldierly: Je suis moi même. sorti de la canaille.' In German, the words Volk and Nation

1 The dictionary of the academy gives, as the last two meanings of the word Peuple-unenlightened men, and men belonging to the lowest classes. Mr. Trench in his Lessons in Proverbs, quotes the French Jesuit Bonhours, who says: Les proverbes sont les sentences du peuple,

came actually to be used as vilifying invectives, even by the lower classes themselves. The words never ceased indeed to be used in their legitimate sense, but they were vulgarly applied in the meaning which I have given. They acquired this ignominious sense, because the nobility, a very numerous class on the continent, looked with arrogance upon the people, and the people, looking up to the nobility with stolid admiration, aped the pride of that class. It is a universal law of social degradation that it consists always of a chain of degraded classes who at the same time are or try to be in turn degraders, as oppression begets the lust of oppressing in the oppressed.

On the other hand, the English word People has never acquired, not even during the English revolution, that import of political horror, which Demos had in the times of Cleon for the reflecting Athenian, or Peuple in the first French revolution. What is the cause of these remarkable facts? I can see no other than that there has always existed a high degree of institutional self-government in England-a very high degree, if we compare her to the continent. The people never ceased to respect themselves; and others never ceased to feel their partial dependence upon them. The aristocracy of England, a patrician body, far more elevated than any continental nobility, still remained connected with the people, by the fact that only one of the patrician family can enjoy the peerage.

et les sentences sont les proverbes des honnêtes gens. (But there are very wicked proverbs.) Honnête means, indeed, frequently something like the Latin honestus, and not exclusively our honest, but even with this addition the English term People could never have been contradistinguished from honnêtes gens. To these remarks we must add the mischievous error of giving the dignified name the people to some people gathered together in the street. We find in the French papers and other publications, at the time of the first revolution constant use of the term, in such manner, as: le peuple has hanged a baker, etc., when the murder was committed by a rabble of a few. This confusion of a few lawless people with the people, for whom the sovereign power was claimed, and, in turn, the arrogation of the sacred name by a few Parisians, may be observed throughout the history of the revolution.

This distinction does not, therefore, indicate a social status, inhering in the blood; for that runs in the whole family. It indicates a political position.1

Possibly most of my American and English readers may not perceive the whole import of these remarks, but let them live for a considerable time on the continent of Europe, and their own observations will not fail to furnish them with commentaries and full explanations of the preceding pages.

Another subject to which I desire to direct attention is Usage, which, as it has been stated, forms an important element of the institution, and, consequently, of institutional government. This is frequently not only admitted by the absolutists, but in bad faith insisted upon. Continental servilists frequently eulogize the liberty of the English, but wind up by pointing at their institutions and their widely spread usages, observing that since these are necessary and do not exist on the continent, neither can liberty exist. It is a faithless plea for servilism. An adequate reply is this: That in no sphere can we attain a given end if we do not make a beginning, and are not prepared for partial failures during that beginning. If spelling is necessary before we can attain to the skill of reading, we must not withhold the spelling-book from the learner; and we ought never to forget the law to which I have alluded in a previous part of this work, namely, that the advancement of mankind is made possible, among other things, by the fact that when a great acquisition is once made on the

1 Aristocratic as England is in many respects, it is nevertheless true that there is no nobility in the continental sense. The law knows of peers, hereditary lawgivers, but it does not know even the word nobleman. The peerage is connected with primogeniture, but there is no English nobility in the blood. The idea of maésalliance has therefore never obtained in England. There is no doubt that the little disposition of the English shown at any time to destroy the aristocracy, is in a great measure owing to this fact, as doubtless the far more judicious spirit of the English peers to yield to the people's demands, if clearly and repeatedly pronounced, has contributed much. Mr. Hallam has very correct remarks on the subject of English equality of civil rights, where he speaks of the reign of Henry III.

field of civilization, succeeding generations, or other clusters of men, are not obliged to pass through all the stages of painful struggle, or tardy experience, which may have been the share of the pioneering nation.

The third additional remark I desire to make is, that institutional and diffused self-government is peculiarly efficient in breaking those shocks which, in a centralized government, reach the farthest corners of the country, and are frequently of a ruinous tendency. This applies not only to the sphere of politics proper, but to all social spheres which more or less. affect the political life of a nation. There are two similar cases in French and English history which seem to illustrate this fact with peculiar force.

Every historian admits that the well-known and infamous necklace affair contributed to hasten on the French revolution, by degrading the queen, and through her, royalty itself, in the eye of France, which then believed in her culpable participation. England was obliged to behold a far more degrading exhibition-the trial of Queen Caroline, the consort of George IV. There was no surmise about the matter. Royalty was exhibited before the nation minutely in the fullest blaze of publicity, and mixed up with an amount of immundicity the exact parallel to which it is difficult to find in history. Every civilized being seemed to be interested in the trial. The portrait of the queen and her trial were printed on kerchiefs and sold all over the continent. The trial, too, took place at a somewhat critical period in England. Yet I am not aware that it had any perceptible effect on the public affairs of England. The institutions of the country could not be affected by it, any more than high walls near muddy rivers are affected by the slime of the tides. But royalty on the continent, trying at that very time to revive absolutism founded upon divine right,' was damaged by the people thus seeing that the purple is too scant to cover disgrace and vulgarity.

1 It was the time when Haller wrote his Restoration of Political Sciences, in which he endeavors to excel Filmer, and does not blush to