The people have often been accused of a blind presumption. Interested declaimers have been pleased to represent them as rejecting with an ignorant impatience the check of the most wise and tutelary laws. History shows us the reverse of this to have been the case. Read its annals: far from justifying this blame, they show, that there is in the governed such a love of order and disposition to submission, that they invariably allow the government to go beyond its legitimate bounds, and to arrogate to itself those prerogatives whose injustice strips them of their most sacred rights. Is it needful to cite other proofs of this than the slavery under which the populations of antiquity groaned, or the humiliations endured up to our time by the most numerous classes? True, there have been revolts caused by the most intolerable suffering; revolutions that have substituted for iniquitous and oppressive forms of organization, institutions more favourable to equity; but these events even attest, that if there be in man an instinctive justice in advance of the laws and leading to their reform, there exists also in the masses a sort of social conscience, which makes their intellectual capacity the standard and measure of their pretensions in the matter of political rights. So long as the masses remain bent down under the yoke of ignorance and destitution, unfitted for taking a part in public affairs, they are seen to resign themselves to a noxious but necessary dependence, and an aristocracy disposes freely of their destiny.

This state of things, however, has a necessary term. The natural attribute of wealth and intelligence, power, always tends to follow their diffusion: it extends, concentrates, or contracts itself with them ;

and the greater part of revolutions are only the consequences of their displacement.

In order that an aristocracy should preserve an immutable supremacy, it would be necessary that no change should take place in the intellectual and economical condition of the community;—and that is scarcely possible. Industry is essentially progressive; it developes itself even in spite of the obstacles which legislation opposes to it; and in proportion as labour, better directed, obtains a higher remuneration, the laborious classes naturally acquiring wealth and intelligence, the dominating caste loses something of its supériority. Nor is this all classes who enlighten and strengthen themselves, learn the value of those rights which ignorance had caused them to abdicate; in a short time, interest prompts their recovery, and as power passes to their side, it becomes more and more difficult for the weakened aristocracy to retain under its yoke subjects eagerly bent on obtaining liberties, alike necessary for their moral dignity and the increase of their material well-being.

In Rome, for example, we behold the poor plebeians endure for a long time all the outrages of a proud and rapacious aristocracy; but no sooner did they count in their ranks men endowed with all the talents necessary for public affairs, than they insisted on a greater equality of rights. In vain did the patricians plead their services; in vain did they recall their victories, their triumphs, and the glory with which they had covered the standards of the republic ;—the ancient relations of strength and intelligence were changed; the people, become rich, informed, and numerous, were able to enforce their just claims; a compromise became

necessary, and the people were admitted to a share of the dignities previously reserved for the minority.

It unfortunately happened, that in antiquity there were insurmountable barriers which arrested the benefits arising from the progress of industry. Excluded from all civil rights, as well as from all means of improving his condition, the slave assisted in chains at the spectacle of the struggles of free men; and, whatever might be their issue, no advantage accrued to him. The ancients dearly expiated the injustice and cruelty of their institutions. With them industry was not a beneficent power, whose development increased and gave life to the elements of social felicity: far from that, by multiplying the number of slaves, the accumulation of riches nourished all the vices peculiar to slavery, and so became that culminating point of fortune on reaching which all the states of antiquity were seen to perish.

We witness more happy results in those societies wherein several causes of which one of the most powerful was a religion, which, in preaching equality before God, favoured it on earth-first slackened, and then entirely broke the chains imposed on the multitude. In Christian Europe, the immorality of the social relations did not poison the fruits of civilization ; and it was among the masses that their beneficial effects were felt. In proportion as labour widened the sphere of production, the possession of lands ceased to be the only means of wealth and consideration :—moveable capital, the offspring of arts and manufactures, became the portion of the classes that created it; and in the course of centuries, its progressive increase raised them in intelligence and comfort.

A contrast truly remarkable! The same tendencies of civilization, which in ages of barbarism fasten on the people the yoke of the minority, undo their own work in a more advanced state of things.

Nor has

any one a right to complain: the aristocracy preserves its wealth, and even profits by the improvements made in agriculture; but it is in the hands of the industrial classes that are amassed the riches accruing from arts and commerce :—these classes increase in number, knowledge, and respectability,-every day brings them nearer to the ruling caste; and the time arrives when they take, perforce, in the political order of things, the place to which their importance entitles them.

It is quite natural that men, whose intelligence has been ripened, and whose sentiments refined, by the circumstances of their situation, should aspire to liberty; but, as if they had need of a stronger impulse, advancing civilization creates a law, which prompts them to protest against a domination whose inconveniences are felt to increase in proportion as the circle of society widens. In fact, however suitable aristocratic forms might be to times when war was the great business of society, agriculture the sole industry, and landed estate the only means of distinction, these forms, in general, present no guarantee for new social existences, for the modes of individual and collective activity which the wants of a more advanced civilization give birth to. In the 12th and 13th centuries, the artisans sought in vain for the protection of the powers that were: exposed to all the exactions of the feudal Barons, no institution afforded them protection; there existed neither laws to shield them from the attacks of violence, nor even Courts of Justice sufficiently enlightened to decide

the differences arising among themselves. It therefore belonged to themselves alone to provide for the wants of their condition; and they did so. By combining their strength, they presented a formidable front to the fighting order: skilfully profiting by conjunctures, they purchased rights and privileges from the king or the great vassals, and by little and little, communes were established. In a short time, other industrial persons came to seek an asylum in these communities, which were distributed into tribes and trading bodies; each corporation had its chief, its funds, regulations, and banners, and liberty, after having established itself in the towns, gained a footing in the rural districts.

Still we must not seek, in the motives which directed the efforts of emancipation at that period, for the slightest trace of modern liberty. Like the aristocracy of the preceding ages, the communal associations had only their own class-interests in view. Composed of men who, on reaching an easy condition, united themselves to take up a position in the bosom of a society still exposed to the scourge of anarchy, they were only little self-constituted powers-petty aristocracies detached from the inferior orders, and which, taking possession of the rights and powers within their reach, strove to extend them to the injury of the public. Commuñes, corporations, companies, guilds, all followed the same course,—all assumed to themselves privileges opposed to the general weal. But according as civilization made way, as industry in its progress enriched and enlightened the bulk of the population, these corporate bodies, tired of the obstacles which their privileges created, claimed the benefits attendant on a perfect equality of rights.