P131-1

1865, Nov. 16.

Two years and a half ago, when the world was yet convulsed with the effects of the French Revolution in the year preceding, and the Liberals were everywhere throughout Europe looking for the regeneration of society from the triumph of democracy in France, we wrote and published in this Magazine these words-" It is frequently asked, what is to be the end of all these changes, and under what form of government are the people of France ultimately to settle? Difficult as it is to predict anything of a people with whom nothing seems to be fixed, but the disposition to change, we have no hesitation in stating our opinion, that the future government of France will be, what that of imperial Rome was, an ELECTIVE MILITARY DESPOTISM. In fact, with the exception of the fifteen years of the Restoration, when a free constitutional monarchy was imposed on its inhabitants by the bayonets of the Allies, it has ever since the Revolution of 1789 been nothing else. The Orleans dynasty has, to all appearance, expired with a disgrace even greater than that which attended its birth. The Bourbons can scarcely expect, in a country so deeply imbued with the love of change, to re-establish their hereditary throne. Popular passion and national vanity call for that favourite object of democratic

VOL. LXXI

societies-a rotation of governors. Popular violence and general suffering will never fail to re-establish, after a brief period of anarchy, the empire of the sword. The successive election of military despots seems the only possible compromise between revolutionary passion and the social necessities of mankind; and as a singular compromise took place after eighty years of bloodshed and confusion in the Roman commonwealth, so, after a similar period of suffering, it will probably be repeated, from the same cause, in the French nation."*

The only particular in which this prophecy has proved incorrect is in the TIME assigned for the establishment of an elective military despotism in France. Judging from the past, it was thought that a considerable period might elapse between the fervour of democratic ambition, the establishment of republican institutions, and the necessary advent of military government. But events now go on with railway speed: there is an electric telegraph in the moral as well as in the physical world. Within less than four years after the triumph of revolutionary ambition, and the proclamation of "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity" by Lamartine, the visionary fabric has fallen to the ground. The brilliant dreams of philanthropy, the towering ambition

of democracy, the selfish grasping of socialist spoliation, have alike been dissipated. Realities have succeeded to chimeras, necessities have prostrated imaginations. Louis Napoleon has assumed the dictatorship, with the concurrence of the only power in the country which, in a decisive struggle, could be relied on. He has virtually declared himself Emperor, by the election of the soldiers. The citizens have confirmed their choice. It has ever been the same. The rule of Cæsar, and Cromwell, and Napoleon, was founded on the same social necessities, springing out of the same social crimes. This 2d December 1851 was but a repetition, and from the same causes, of the 18th Brumaire 1799. Successful high treason, triumphant rebellion, lead invariably to one result-general slavery and military despotism; and of all the pioneers to the last terrible catastrophe that the mind of man ever conceived, a socialist revolution is the most effectual, for it at once unites all persons possessed of property, however small, on the side of despotic power.

That it may not be supposed that these observations are exaggerations of our own, we select, out of a multitude of others which might be taken, the following graphic description of the state of Paris in the first week of December 1851, three years and nine months after the overthrow of Louis Philippe, and establishment of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity by the formation of a republic.

"If anything could give an appearance of legal necessity to the military operations in Paris, and to the tremendous severity of the measures employed to crush the resistance of the people, it is the part which the organised sections of the Red Republic and the desperate combatants of that faction are again taking in this struggle. 'Non tali auxilio nec defensoribus istis, may well be the answer of the French people to a cry of independence and a promise of succour conveyed to them in the sinister language of M. Louis Blanc. Nothing can be more afflicting than the position of the middle classes and the pacific part of the population, between a host of fierce revolutionists who can only be put down by an immense army, and an army prepared to dispose absolutely of all political

power as a recompense for the protection it affords to property and life. For the first time in these terrific street-battles, the National Guard. It is remarkable of Parisian history, we hear nothing of that no proclamation or appeal has been addressed to that body by the government. The civic forces have been expressly consigned to inaction, evidently because Louis Napoleon was afraid to rely upon them, and nothing would have been more inconvenient than the opposition of legions of armed citizens. Even now it is not impossible that their weight may be felt before the termination of this conflict, but felt against the executive power. The government has staked its whole success on the army alone, and the strength of the regular forces engaged is immensely greater than on any former occasion. But, be the political opinions and ulterior views of the popular leaders what they may, it is impossible not to feel for the dauntless courage with which they have flung themselves into open resistance to an unexampled violation of the rights of the nation. The middle classes, though probably most aggrieved by the menaces of military despotism, would have found neither the means nor the spirit to defy such a power. But, if the men of the faubourgs are as tenacious and as brave in the defence of the laws of the republic as they have more than once shown themselves to be when they rose against the laws of the monarchy, victory has not even yet declared herself against the liberties of France. These men are not, at least on this occasion, the insurgents, if by an insurgent is meant the man who conspires against the legal order of the country, and seeks to change by force the constitution and the govern

ment.

Shots were

"The barricades first thrown up on Wednesday evening were speedily carried by the soldiers; but the night was spent in further preparations for war. A large column of troops was silently moved along the Boulevard towards the Faubourg St. Antoine, and the positions between the Canal and the Porte St. Martin were strongly occupied. occasionally fired from houses on the line of march, but these acts of hostility were instantly punished bythe summary seizure or slaughter of the inhabitants. manent court-martial was sitting, by whose orders some, and we are told a large number, of the prisoners taken between the barricades were shot. Yet these operations and this rigour did not prevent the popular movement from increasing in extent and in violence. An immense body of troops, or rather an entire army, described to consist of fifty

A per

thousand men, poured towards the scene of action. Yet we find by the latest accounts that barricades had been raised as far to the west as the Rue GrangeBatelière; the upper Boulevards were continually swept by charges of lancers; and the cannonade had almost reached the fashionable quarter just beyond the Rue Vivienne. Hitherto we had beheld in France contests between governments armed to defend the laws of society, and insurgents armed to overthrow them. But now, as if to make this chaos of anarchy worse confounded, men have to take a part between a government attacking the law, and an insurrection to defend it; though it is but too probable that the triumph of either faction will inflict a ghastly wound on the freedom and welfare of the nation. Such are the results of those alternations between an excessive impatience of legal authority, and a servile deference to arbitrary power, which are so strangely united in the French character; and, whatever be the deplorable condition of such a people, its trials and its struggles are solely attributable to acts depending on its own will.

"Our readers can hardly have forgotten, although nearly four years have elapsed, the spirit of deep self-abasement and humiliation, as regarded England, and of respectful and enthusiastic veneration as regarded France, with which certain of our contemporaries heralded the dawning of that bright day which announced to an astonished world the then last French revolution. Compared to the gigantic progress of our lively neighbours, our own steps in the march of improvement seemed sluggish and unphilosophical. Our historical constitution seemed shabby and time worn beside the flaunting robe in which France, for the twentieth or thirtieth time, had bedecked herself. Our cumbrous statutes, our prosy speeches, our hum-drum habits of plodding industry, were despised in their eyes, when compared with the brilliant achievements and flowery oratory of French Republicanism, and above all, with the impeccable constitution which M. MARRAST so happily improvised to meet the wants of a nation able at one rapid bound to clear the distance which separates a constituency of two hundred thousand persons from universal suffrage. Their constitution was founded, not like ours, upon the historical precedents of semi-barbarous ages, but upon the three mighty corner-stones of LIBERTY, EQUALITY, and FRATERNITY, on which the stately fabric rested in all the indestructibility of logical cohesion. Vote by ballot they had

already, universal suffrage and quadrennial Parliaments the constitution gave them. Aristocracy they had none-so there was no need of a second chamber to control the deliberations of the Assembly. There was no political Manicheeism, and the good or democratic element was left unchecked by its evil or aristocratic counterpoise. Besides this, France was freed from the anomaly of hereditary monarchy, and enabled by the same wise and glorious institutions to select from her citizens the best and worthiest for her Chief, uninfluenced by the accident of birth, and unshackled by the tyranny of an Act of Settlement. Did ever nation, according to modern liberal theories, make a fairer start on the road to prosperity and greatness?

'Waving the tedious retrospect of the intervening period, we would ask enthusiastic admirers of modern republicanism, as preached by Kossutш, and as practised by France, how far they are content with the fruits of their favourite system? And, first, of individual liberty. How would the citizens of this monarchical and aristocratical country relish a prohibition against the assembling of groups in the streets, and the announcement that they would be dispersed by armed force, and without previous notice? Surely this was not the ' FRATERNITY' that Monsieur LAMARTINE promised us. The liberty of the press is even still less favoured than that of individual pedestrians, for, while the latter are allowed to 'circulate, the newspapers are, with very few exceptions, suppressed by violence, and their offices occupied by military. The passage of public vehicles is likewise prohibited. Such things are, we suppose, impediments to the full and unrestricted exercise of freedom, though in our benighted metropolis many a Radical would grievously miss the newspaper on his breakfast table, and the omnibus which was wont to carry him to the city; while we greatly doubt if the coachmen and conductors possess patriotism enough to acquiesce without a murmur in such a sacrifice, however requisite to the cause of freedom. Then, as to public liberty, we find the child and champion of universal suffrage packing off two hundred of the chosen of the nation in vans to St. Valerien, a sort of Parisian Pentonville, and sending the best generals and ablest orators of France to eat their Christmas dinners with what appetite they may in a remote and gloomy fortress. We find the Court of Justice, charged by the constitution with an important duty which it was sworn to perform, forbidden to execute it by a person who had