"In the name of the people," are the words with which commenced the first decree of Louis Napoleon, issued after the second of December, when he had made himself master of France, and in which he called upon all the French to state whether he should have unlimited power for ten years. If it was not their will, the decree said, there was no necessity of violence, for in that case he would resign his power. This was naive. But theories or words proclaimed before the full assumption of imperatorial sovereignty are of as little importance as after it. Where liberty is not a fact and a daily recurring reality, it is not liberty. The word Libertas occurs frequently on the coins of Nero, and still more often the sentimental words, Fides Mutua, Liberalitas Augusta, Felicitas Publica.

Why, it may still be asked, did the Cæsars recur to the people as the source of their power, and why did the civilians. say that the emperor was legislator, and power-holder, inasmuch as the majestas of the Roman people, who had been legislators and power-holders, had been conferred upon him? Because, partly, the first Cæsars, at any rate the very first, had actually ascended the steps of power with the assistance of some popular element, cheered on somewhat like a diademed tribune; because there was and still is no other actual source of power imaginable than the people, whether they positively give it, or merely acquiesce' in the imperatorial power, and because, as to the historical fact by which power in any given. case is acquired, we must never forget that the ethical element and that of intellectual consistency are so inbred in man that, wherever humanity is developed, a constant desire is observable to make actions, however immoral or inconsistent, at least theoretically agree with them. No proclamation of war has ever avowed, I believe, that war was simply undertaken because he who issued the proclamation had the power and

As the words stand above, I own, they may be variously interpreted; but it would evidently lead me too far, were I to attempt a full statement of the sense in which I take them, which indeed I have done at length in my Political, Ethics.

meant to use it fas aut nefas.1 Even Attila called himself the Scourge of God.

No matter what the violence of facts has been, however rudely the shocks of events have succeeded one another, the first thing that men do after these events have taken place is invariably to bring them into some theoretical consistency, and to attempt to give some reasonable account of them. This is the intellectual demand ever active in man. The other, equally active, is the ethical demand. No man, though he commanded innumerable legions, could stand up before a people and say: "I owe my crown to the murder of my mother, to the madness of the people, or to slavish place-men." To appear merely respectable in an intellectual and ethical point of view, requires some theoretical decorum. The purer the generally acknowledged code of morality or the prevailing religion is, or the higher the general mental system which prevails at the time, the more assiduous are also those who lead the public events, to establish, however hypocritically, this apparent agreement between their acts and theory, as well as morals. It is a tribute, though impure, paid to truth and morality.

The reader sufficiently acquainted with history will remember that the consul Manlius, when the Galatians, a people in Asia Minor, urged that they had given no offence to the Romans, answered that they were a profligate people deserving punishment, and that some of their ancestors had, centuries before, plundered the temple of Delphi. Justin, the historian, says that the Romans assisted the Acarnanians against the Ætolians because the former had joined in the Trojan war, a thousand years before. But this principle does not act, even to a degree What cruelties have not been committed Pro

of caricature, in politics only. majore Dei gloria!

CHAPTER XXXIII.

IMPERATORIAL SOVEREIGNTY, CONTINUED.-ITS ORIGIN AND CHARACTER EXAMINED.

IT has been said in the preceding pages that imperatorial sovereignty must be always the most stringent absolutism,' especially when it rests theoretically on election by the whole people, and that the transition from an uninstitutional popular absolutism to the imperatorial sovereignty is easy and natural. At the time of the so-called French republic of 1848, it was a common way of expressing the idea then prevailing, to call the people le peuple-roi (the king-people,) and an advocate, defending certain persons before the high court of justiciary sitting at Versailles in 1849, for having invaded the chamber of representatives, and consequently having violated the constitution, used this remarkable expression: "the people” (confounding of course a set of people, a gathering of a part of the inhabitants of a single city, with the people) “never violate the constitution."

Where such ideas prevail, the question is not about a change of ideas, but simply about the lodgment of power. The minds and souls are already thoroughly familiarized with the idea of absolutism, and destitute of the idea of self-government. This is also one of the reasons why there is so much similarity between monarchical absolutism, such for instance as we see in

That absolutism and imperatorial sovereignty go hand in hand, was neatly acknowledged by an inscription over the sub-prefecture of Dunkerque, when the imperial couple passed it, in 1855. It was to this effect: À l'héritier de Napoléon, la ville de Louis XIV.

2 Mr. Michel, on the 10th of November. I quote from the French papers, which gave detailed reports. Mr. Michel, to judge from his own speech, seems to have been the oldest of the defending advocates.

Russia, and communism, as it was preached in France; and it explains why absolutism, having made rapid strides under the Bourbons before the first revolution, has terminated every successive revolution with a still more compressive absolutism and centralism, except indeed the revolution of 1830. This revolution was undertaken to defend parliamentary government, and may be justly called a counter-revolution on the part of the people against a revolution attempted and partially carried by the government. It explains farther how Louis Napoleon after the second of December, and later when he desired to place the crown of uncompromising absolutism on his head, could appeal to the universal suffrage of all France -he that had previously curtailed it, with the assistance of the chamber of representatives. This phenomenon, however, must be explained also by the system of centralism, which prevails in France. I shall offer a few remarks on this topic after having treated of some more details appertaining to the subject immediately in hand.

The idea of the peuple-roi (it would perhaps have been more correct to say peuple-czar) also tends to explain the otherwise inconceivable hatred against the bourgeoisie, by which the French understand the aggregate of those citizens who inhabit towns and live upon a small amount of property or by traffic. The communists and the French so-called democrats entertained a real hatred against the bourgeoisie; the proclamations, occasionally issued by them, openly avowed it; and the government, when it desired to establish unconditional absolutism in form as well as principle, fanned this hatred. Yet no nation can exist without this essential element of society. In reading the details of French history of the year 1848 and the next succeeding years, the idea is forced upon our mind. that a vast multitude of the French were bent on establishing a real and unconditional aristocracy of the ouvrier-the workman.'

This error broke forth into full blaze at the indicated time, but it had of course been long smouldering, and, as is customary, had found some fuel even

If the imperatorial sovereignty is founded upon an actual process of election, whether this consist in a mere form or not, it bears down all opposition, nay all dissent, however lawful it may be, by a reference to the source of its power. It says: "I am the people, and whoever dissents from me is an enemy to the people. Vox Populi vox Dei. My divine right is the voice of God, which spake in the voice of the people. The government is the true representative of the people.”1

in our country. In the year 1841, during the presidential canvass, a gentleman -who has since become the editor of a Catholic periodical, and has probably changed his views—published a pamphlet in which he attacked individual property, and fell into the same error which is spoken of in the text above.

The author of the pamphlet, which was very widely distributed, found it of course impossible to draw the line between the workmen and those who are not "working," and I recollect that he did not even allow the superintendent of a factory to be a workman. I have treated of these subjects in detail in my Essays on Labor and Property, and believe that a Humboldt is a harder "working man," not indeed than the poor weaver who allows himself but five hours' rest in the whole twenty-four, but certainly a far harder working man than any of those physically employed persons who want to make their class a privileged order. The fact is simply this, that there is no toiling man, however laboriously employed in a physical way, that does not guide his efforts by an exertion of the brain, and no mentally employed man that is not obliged to accompany his labor by some, frequently by much, physical exertion. To draw an exact line between the two, for political purposes, is impossible. All attempts at doing so are mischievous. The hands and the brain rule the world. All labor is manual and cerebral, but the proportion in which the elements combine is infinite. So soon as no cerebral labor is necessary, we substitute the animal or the machine. In reading some socialist works, one would almost suppose that men had returned to some worship of the animal element, raising pure physical exertion above all other human endeavors. Humanity does not present itself more respectably than in the industrious and intelligent artisan, but every artisan justly strives to reach that position in which he works more by the intellect than by physical exertion. He strives to be an employer. The type of a self-dependent and striving American artisan is a really noble type. The author hopes to count many an American operative among his readers; and, if he be not deceived, he takes this opportunity of declaring that he believes he too has a very fair title to be called a hardworking man, without claiming any peculiar civil privileges on that account.

The idea that God speaks through the voice of the people, familiar to the middle ages, is connected with the elections of ruder times by general acclaim. It reminds us also of the Dieu le veut, at Clermont, when Peter the Hermit called on the chivalry and the people to take the sign of the cross. And again it reminds us of the disastrous décrets d'acclamation of the first French revolution. That