THE EMPIRE.

THE EMPIRE.FROM THE REVUE DU MONDE CATHOLIQUE.Theimperial form of government has sprung up in France within seventy years, and been only slightly modified by the different administrations that have succeeded each other. And yet nothing could be more at variance with the traditions, customs, and genius of the nation. Thisrégimeis of foreign origin. It is the recrudescence of the conquest of Gaul by Julius Cæsar. It has subjected us again to a yoke analogous to the condition we were in after Gaul lost its independence. The veil that blinded us to its real nature has fallen off in the shock of momentous events. It is important to reassert a truth that will now be better comprehended. The historians of the Revolution have endeavored to show that the revolutionary movement of 1789 was purely French, and the result of national necessity; but the very violence that accompanied it proves the contrary. Natural developments are effected peacefully. Louis XVI., so far from resisting the torrent, seconded it, and abandoned himself to it. Nothing shows so fully what an effort was necessary for the triumph of the Revolution as the impossibility of its succeeding by regular means and the assent of the country. It took France by assault. It profited by circumstances, but this does not change the nature of its deeds or the character of its success. We do not deny that this pagan and Cæsarean tradition might have found its way into France with the monarchy, but it is certain that, however restrained it had been by Christian principles, it all at once broke through its bounds. Half the members of the Constituent Assembly belonged to the legal profession. Imbued with the absolutist teachings of Roman law, they energetically sought to apply them. The Revolution recalls ancient Greco-Roman days; there is nothing Christian about it. What is the sovereignty of the people but the very principle that laid the foundation of despotism in Greece? The title of “citizen” implies that all Frenchmen belong to the same city or town. This risingen masse, and the notion that every Frenchman is a soldier, are wholly pagan. The legislative corps—that means the people make their own laws, only they do so by proxy. What! the people not exercise their special prerogative! In ancient times, though the people only amounted to a few thousand voters, they never fully enjoyed the legislative power. Besides, in consequence of the institution of slavery, every shade of democracy was equivalent to an aristocracy. The legislators of 1789 only recognized the slavery of citizens with respect to the state, which induced them to create a power strong enough to counterbalance and represent their ten millions of constituents.Their proscriptions, denunciations, conspiracies, and struggles recall the time of Marius and Sylla. It is worthy of notice that in the revolutionary documents the heroes of Athens and Rome replace the saints of the calendar. This imitation isextremely amusing. A religion utterly pagan follows. A Pantheon is opened to modern divinities, and great men deified. Catholicism undergoes a persecution unsurpassed by the persecutions of the emperors of the first three centuries. It alone is excluded from the Pantheon. Under the empire, this imitation is so striking that it is impossible to mistake it. The Napoleonic era recalls that of the Cæsars. In this new civilization, or ancient civilization revived, new terms are necessary to express the changes made. Political language is modified. First we have consuls, then tribunes, then a senate, and at last an emperor. The senatus-consultum keeps pace with the plebiscitum. The subdued provinces are governed by prefects. The judges are merely Napoleon’s delegates. The whole of this organization is of foreign, not French, origin. Our history presents no parallel to it. And the reality corresponds with the appearances: it is the engrafting of absolute power on the sovereignty of the people. For the emperor never disguised the source of his authority. He always assumed to be the representative of the people. Like Augustus and Tiberius, he derived the imperial inviolability from the tribunitian character with which he was invested. The empire had itsnoblesse, but anoblesseof titles and decorations similar to that of the Lower Empire. All independence was denied thisnoblesse. The army was likewise organized after the manner of the Roman legion. There were no longer any local distinctions. Each regiment was composed of a confused mixture of the various French peoples. The officers even did not belong to their regiments. They knew, in their nomadic life, only the will of Cæsar, on whom alone they depended, and who transported them from one regiment to another, and from one place to another. Passive instruments, they had no will of their own. Therefore, they were ready for anything.Formerly, the army could not be employed against the nation. It represented the different social elements, and enjoyed the independence natural to these elements. The officers retained their independence, for they served at their own expense from a sense of duty. The administration, the bar, and the army under the empire depended on one individual. Neither local customs, nor municipal corporations, nor right of property could withstand this despotism. A universal levelling under the name of equality smoothed away every obstacle before Cæsar. What rank could stand before the formidable title of the sovereignty of the people? This Cæsarean power found no embodiment in one of French origin. It fell to an Italian, a Roman, to one who rivalled Plutarch’s heroes. This Italian assumed control of the Revolution without ceasing to be Italian, or rather Roman; for Roman he was, a cosmopolite. His aim was to restore the Roman Empire, or the Empire of the West. The French nation was to be the means of universal conquest, as the Gauls in the hands of his predecessors, the Cæsars. Of old France he preserved no vestige. And he carried into Italy his achievements in France. He extended the Revolution to Spain. There was nothing French in a single characteristic of his genius. And his race have obstinately pursued the imperial career which he opened. His nephew, like himself, a mixture of astuteness, violence, boundless ambition, utopianism, literary tastes, and fatalism, renewed the glory of the empire. Louis Napoleon also belonged to all lands. Italian, Swiss, German, English, American—he hadsomething of them all. He spoke all languages as well as the French, and his French was that of a refugee. During his reign, he assembled around him none but foreigners. His apartments were never clear of the outlandish people he had become acquainted with in his wanderings. He loved to converse with them, to tell them his plans. And these adventurers enjoyed being with him. They found him as utopian as ever, as unchanged in his notions, and the phenomenon interested them. No Frenchman of note consented to serve him. France was given up to foreigners. They penetrated everywhere, and took possession of the country. Imperial cosmopolitanism attracted them, and sheltered them, and overloaded them with favors. French policy became English, Italian, American. The denationalization of France was effected by the laws, public schools, new manners, and the transformation of Paris into an European capital of pleasures and the arts: France disappeared. This system was overthrown when, arrived at the highest pitch of madness, Louis Napoleon, after effecting the unity of Italy, so powerfully aided King William in setting up the new Empire of Germany as a rival to France. He sacrificed France to the triumph of the imperial idea in Italy and Germany.The Bonaparte family is completely destitute of patriotism. Its cosmopolitan character is constantly asserting itself. Louis Napoleon’s foreign policy was essentially anti-French. His constant desire to effect the unity of Italy and that of Germany was the wish of an alien. Our interior legislation became no less opposed to the national character. What is the civil code but the systematization of principles laid down in the Digest? The right of property restricted by the legislator, family rights suppressed for the benefit of Cæsar, and property, as well as individuals, placed under administrative direction—all this is Bonapartism as well as Cæsarism. Outside of the central power, there was no authority possessing any freedom of action in France. No municipal body was safe from dissolution. No corporation was allowed to stand alone. Obedience became the lot of the French; which does not imply order and unanimity, for the government, with contradictory aims, and without any real permanence, imposed laws that were contradictory and impracticable. The distinguishing feature of Bonapartism is the union of liberal theories with absolute power. In spite of universal suffrage and deliberative assemblies, despotism increased and was strengthened. It even relied on the opposing and controlling influences it created. The senate and the legislative corps were subservient to the empire, and sustained it. The idea of equality and liberty constantly held out by high imperial functionaries contributed to the popularity of the Napoleons. Under the laterégime, Prince Jerome Napoleon was charged with representing the democratic side of the imperial government. But we know now, by the revelations of the papers found, that his opinions always coincided with the emperor’s. This was what may be called playing into each other’s hands. The tip of the ear shows itself in those liberal speeches which were apparently most hostile to the government in such a way that no one who knows how to read can fail to perceive it. Under his forcible language is concealed a faint, half-expressed, vague opinion, but which is clearly and positively opposed to the rights of assemblies. What enthusiastic liberalism did notM. de Persigny manifest! According to him, provincial liberty was upheld by thepréfets, whom he styled, on one occasion, the fathers of the departments. This sally caused much laughter, but M. de Persigny did not laugh. This same minister bethought himself of some conflicting elements that had evaded the superintending eye of Cæsar. It occurred to him to place his master officially at the head of the secret societies, and he transformed free-masonry into an imperial institution.The despotism that has weighed on France for seventy years is unknown to the rest of Europe. We do not say that other nations have not undergone various degrees of despotism, but the despotism of a dictatorship founded on the sovereignty of the people is a privilege France alone has enjoyed. A dictatorship, that institution of republican Rome, has been known here since 1789. Successive governments have been set up in the name of the people; they have all been ephemeral; they have acknowledged no other will but their own—at least, in the beginning. The dictatorship is renewed every ten years. At Rome, before the empire, it has been calculated that every three years and a half a dictatorship was established, which lasted six months or thereabouts. Our situation, therefore, is preferable. It may, however, be questioned if it is the ideal of a Christian nation. Louis Napoleon became the open apologist of Julius Cæsar: he took sides against the Gauls and Franks, who were our ancestors. This audacity excited universal astonishment. The Romans from the beginning were accustomed to absolute power and anarchy. In the vast series of revolutions that make up their history, we find no fixed form of government. The consuls, prætors, and tribunes at Rome, and in the provinces the proconsuls and governors, exercised unlimited power. The emperor was only a perpetual dictator. Roman civilization was absolute power opposed to the liberties of foreign and barbarous nations who preserved a primitive social organization, and lived under patriarchal institutions. The Roman historians acknowledge that the barbarians fought for liberty. The Romans governed the provinces as, at a later period, the Turks governed the countries they conquered. Science and literature have depicted their sanguinary course with brilliant sophistry, and erected it into a system. There is no doubt that the thousands of jurisconsults who devoted their talents to the empire never questioned the legitimacy of Cæsarism. They did not even comprehend German liberty. They often spoke of it with a rare ignorance.Tacitus sometimes forgets the fidelity with which he has described the manners of the Germans. He passes this singular judgment on a people of Thrace whose independent spirit he mentions:Ne regibus parere nisi ex libidine soliti[169]—they obey their kings only according to their caprice or humor. To us this has no sense. Tacitus sees that these people obey sometimes, but not always. He does not perceive the link that connects these two facts. To obey through humor or caprice is not to obey at all. What is their legal obligation? It is sufficient to examine their barbarous institutions. The barbarous king is neither a dictator nor consul: he is like a father. His authority is limited by other heads of families and by their customs. The tribe obeys, but only after discussing the point in the assemblies of the nation.The people obey when the king has received the necessary approval of the established authorities. There is not, as under the Roman government, a man who rules, and a nation that obeys. This dualism does not exist among the barbarians. The king is a part of the nation, as a father is of his family, which attributes a high dignity to both king and father, but not great power. Unity of action, in this case, comes by the concurrence of wills. This concurrence is permanent, and the easier because nature, through the family ties, softens difference of opinion, lessens rivalries, and produces men of incontestable authority whose very birth commands respect. Their laws are less severe and stringent, but liberty reigns, and society is based on the affections, and not on the mere predominance of force. Tacitus would be more intelligible if he said that the people only obeyed after giving their approval according to forms which custom had established. Strictly speaking, the wordlibidomight imply either consent or assent. The idea is somewhat obscure. But there is nothing to authorize a translator to say the people obeyed their king only through caprice or humor. Tacitus finds it difficult to comprehend the organization of the tribe, and does not regard it as of much account. He judges like a Roman who has a clear notion only of military rule and passive obedience. In spite of himself, however, he dwells on these barbarians, who inspire him with a kind of terror. He points out the effects of their patriarchal institutions from which the liberty of modern nations has sprung. His books are for us a title of honor. Our ancestors figure therein as conquered: their features are changed, but not unrecognizable. We love to find proofs that the traditions of liberty among the French race preceded the importation of despotism.Despotism came to us by the way of revolution. This will not surprise any one. The empire is the highest and most definite form of despotism among civilized nations. Our enlightenment, or pretended enlightenment, so far from having any repugnance to it, evidently led to it. Are we more enlightened than the Greeks and Romans? Are our rulers better versed in art, law, or literature than the rulers of Athens or Rome? The idea of despotism has been so infused into the modern mind that even the extreme partisans of liberty can conceive of nothing but despotism as the basis of their theories. M. Jules Simon, the worthy successor of M. Duruy, dreams of subjecting France to the communist system of Spartan education. And hardly any one ventures to oppose him. What notions of liberty have children reared by the state? They are brought up in the official world, imbibe its sentiments and the ideas of the state, and reproduce them in their public and private life. We who cannot consent to the suppression of the family are desirous that children should bear the impress of family influences. The family yoke is sweet and light; the assimilation of children to their parents is easy. The liberty of children is guaranteed. Family authority is a less burdensome restraint than that of the state, and the multitude of families creates a sort of counterpoise, so that their minds are not formed by a single will, but develop according to their various aptitudes. If any one objects that the state teaches no doctrines, we reply that to teach none is to teach some. In fact, this is really the source of indifference, or the system of practical atheism. Is not this the doctrine that is agitating France?Our government has been copied from the Cæsarean government. Everywhere is to be seen a gradation of functionaries who receive their orders from Paris, and are not opposed by any provincial action capable of resisting them. It is useless to enumerate all the public or collective offices in order to show how they are combined under a single impulsion. No country in Europe has attained to such perfection of the imperialrégime. The Roman Empire even has been surpassed, for we have the advantage of the press, railways, and telegraphs, which increase the power of the state to an indefinite degree. New ideas have also arisen to the aid of this despotism. Political economy declares the loan to be the best of investments. The patrimony of future generations has been invested in bonds regulated by the present generation. By successive loans, all individual capital has fallen into the hands of the state. In a more or less indirect way, the state has taken possession of all the charitable or other funds created by associations or individuals. Confiscations are not nominally practised, but by the ingenuity of our fiscal system, and the skilful apportionment of the taxes, the whole value of the soil passes into the fiscal treasury in forty years. This is really a kind of confiscation. Cæsarism found out how to transform the Chamber of Deputies into a fiscal instrument. Instead of moderating, limiting, or abolishing the taxes, the Chamber of Deputies, and especially our recent legislative corps, have studied how to increase them. All the representatives of the people have looked upon their constituents as subjects to be taxed and made use of. The government has had more income from the taxes than it wanted. This work of communism has been applauded in a thousand revolutionary papers. In this respect, the republican assemblies have not differed from the imperial. Whether the deputies were chosen by the ballot, by the nomination of Parisian committees, or the appointment of the Minister of the Interior, the state of the case and the result have been the same.The organization of our army is entirely Cæsarean. Though levied from the whole country, it takes cognizance of nothing that is local or provincial. Individual measures are repressed by the bureaucracy, which is subservient to Cæsar because it is detached from the soil, and is influenced only by the hope of promotion.But the French magistracy at least enjoys independence? It did previous to 1789. The government did not interpose in the appointment of magistrates. This system, otherwise very defective, did not err through servility. The empire, artfully retaining a certain semblance of the ancientrégime, was careful not to do so where the independence of the magistracy was concerned. The emperor nominated all the magistrates, and made them removable at pleasure. This system did not suit the Restoration, and immovability was established. Under Louis Philippe, the magistracy rapidly diminished. The more honest felt themselves bound by their oath, and refused to serve the royalty of July. But the Third Empire, by its administrative practices, effaced the last trace of judiciary independence, and destroyed the permanence of the office by the prospect of lucrative advancement. Hitherto money had not seemed to be the aim of the magistrate. The idea of a career to pursue never entered his head. The magistrate did not have to earn his livelihood, and he belonged to his native place,where, regarded with universal respect, he lived on his own fortune, which was the exterior pledge of his independence. The needy and the ambitious did not seek such a post. The empire raised the salaries of the magistrates only to make the office accessible to that class of people who are ready to obey at whatever cost. Immovability was illusory when the greater part of the magistrates, desirous only of advancement, went from one place to another according to the ministerial humor. Besides, the government asked nothing better than to have in each locality transient magistrates who were strangers to the people, and only awaited an opportunity of ascending the ladder of promotion. This allurement was more efficacious than fear in effecting the change in our judiciary customs. The justiceship of the peace, which ought to be a kind of rural and local institution, and which for some time preserved that character, speedily degenerated. The empire at last ended by bringing it completely under the yoke of centralism. Instead of being the independent arbiter of petty quarrels and trivial interests that required immediate solution because they were not worth the expense and delay of a suit, the justice of the peace now found himself an electoral agent, and implicated in politics. He had to be chosen from the nomadic class of civilians. To prevent all ties with the people, fees were done away with, and his salary made equal to that of the judges of the inferior court. The pretext was made that the dignity of the magistracy did not allow a judge to receive perquisites. The truth is that there was a very different reason. The justices of the peace, being natives of the country, and already in possession of a patrimony, had no eye to the fees. Many of them had scarcely any. On an average, the perquisites did not amount to more than five or six hundred francs, and were not always easily collected. A mere income of seven or eight hundred francs was not sufficient to attract a stranger, especially when there was no prospect of promotion. The empire sought to bind the justices of the peace closely to itself, and deprived the office, practically speaking, of its perpetuity, for the same reason that it had made the assize judges removable. The justiceship of the peace, having been made a round of the judiciary ladder, became accessible to those civilians or agents who only asked to serve the government. Our judiciary army, as numerous as our administrative army, and composed of agents nominated directly by the state, had, then, but one course open to it. Its apparent immovability no longer hid anything. Those who are familiar with the affairs of the empire know what to think of a magistracy which takes it upon itself to sound its own praises. Though founded on very different principles, the French magistracy, by a sudden deviation, has gone back to the Cæsarean type of Byzantium.This mixture of the appearance of freedom with despotism is natural to an absolute power resting on a popular basis. We cannot see how it could be otherwise. Ancient Rome afforded the same spectacle. The Cæsars never ceased to repeat that they were the representatives of the people, and the defenders of national liberty. We are not astonished that the French government which sprang from the Revolution has assumed this attitude. The Romans only admitted Roman civilization, which they called “Roman peace.” Their poets often speak of “the majesty of Roman peace.” Civilization, then, consisted in obeying the proconsuls,paying the taxes, furnishing recruits, and working on the roads and public monuments. At this price, the provinces enjoyed a little tranquillity. It is noteworthy that the French Revolution assumed to be the only light capable of guiding the world in the way of liberty, equality, fraternity, progress, civilization, comfort, etc. Its disciples still assert that France is continuing to fulfil this mission. This is what Louis Napoleon meant when he said that France alone contended for an idea. This immeasurable pride in thinking ourselves superior to other nations has had to bow down. It was not by virtue of our actual qualities that we undertook to assume such a supremacy, but, on the contrary, by virtue of the errors and vices that have sprung up in modern times. In the XVIIth century, when our moral superiority was acknowledged and incontestable, no Frenchman ever advertised any pretension to overrule other nations, or believed that our nation was destined to precede others in order to enlighten them. This pretension sprang up in 1789, at the time when a new system was promulgated in the midst of the terrors of the Revolution. Supposing this idea to be new, what right had France to impose it forcibly on other nations? Europe rose in arms to repel revolutionary or Cæsarean invasions, and before the coalition France has three times fallen.We have been sobered by this experience. Therôle, brilliant as it was, has only left us bitter remembrances. It remains for us to govern ourselves without any pretension to govern others. Our political and military organization has suddenly crumbled to pieces. That masterpiece, which was a combination of contradictions, order, and disorder, is now only a ruin. Lamentations are heard on all sides. It is perceived that, under the pretext of equality, all Frenchmen have been reduced to equal powerlessness. When men of good-will sprang up on every hand to the help of France, leaders were wanting; there was no one to direct. Overwhelmed in the first place by number, we ended by overcoming that difficulty, and then there was a deficiency of organization. Leaders and discipline are not the work of a day. If education has not developed individual ability, in vain will you seek for genuine, natural, and acknowledged leaders. The spirit of the family alone, by forming the character, habituates men to a necessary subordination. The atheism of the state tends to root out of every conscience the sense of duty. How obey, if we do not comprehend the obligation of obedience, and if those who rule over us do not seem worthy of ruling us? Discipline is a certain moral order. It should first exist within us by submission to Providence and to the social order established by Providence. Imperial and republican despotism have aimed at moulding the whole French nation after one single type. And when the overruling, guiding will was gone, the whole nation was paralyzed. The Roman Empire had the same fate. It fell both in the east and west from causes analogous to those that are preying on us. An able despotism, a vast material organization, admirable military traditions, and the assent of the people, could not ensure the stability of the brilliant communities of Rome and Byzantium. The same principles must lead to the same consequences: no stable form of government; the supreme power constantly at the mercy of elections, factions, and violence. The Cæsarean system, whenever it obtainssway, gives glory, and grandeur, and brilliancy to society, but also leads to anarchy and incurable weakness.Roman civilization was overthrown by pastoral nations: in the East, by the Arabs and Turks; in the West, by the Germans. Cæsarean France easily obtained the ascendancy over Italy, Austria, and Spain, because, already initiated into Cæsarism by Roman law, they offered but slight resistance. But when it undertook a struggle with Germany, its fortune changed, because that country has many strong elements opposed to Cæsarism and the principles of the French Revolution. Itsesprit de famille, its tendency to decentralization, and its official morality, superior to ours, are among the differences that carry us back to the invasions of the first four centuries. Cæsarean France has played a great part against modern Germany. But France is not so thoroughly Cæsarean as the Roman Empire. Its interests, its customs, and its traditions, impregnated with Catholicism, resist this assimilation. The Italian astuteness of the Bonapartes succeeded in making us think despotism would lead to liberty. Our eyes are painfully opened to the imperialrégimeand modern institutions. We can no longer deny that our social condition has approximated to ancient Cæsarism, and reproduced its principal conditions. The empire did not even conceal this imitation. The public works and the plebiscitum were the popular side of thisrégime. No nation of Europe has experienced anything comparable to it. In no other has the government become the contractor and general constructor of all the public works.The Roman Empire alone presents a similar spectacle. The emperors provided for the amusement of the Roman people. They instituted festivals and games. They everywhere erected buildings for ornament or public utility, the ruins of which are still famous. The great monuments of our ancient monarchies were due to individuals, guilds, and the zeal of the faithful. The state did not interpose. Since 1789, the state alone has erected edifices because it alone has had wealth. This system of public works is only one form of communism. Though Louis Napoleon had no taste for the arts, he had a passion for building. This phlegmatic Cæsar, like the Roman emperors, made it a duty to amuse the people. Family gatherings and the old festivals authorized by religion did not meet with his approval. Such festivals are, from their very nature, anti-Cæsarean. They recall principles and sentiments opposed to Cæsarism. But the individual must not escape Cæsar. Public amusements have a certain influence of their own. They must divert the mind from all the influences of family, corporations, and religion, and partake of the vulgar communism authorized by the state. It is thus Cæsar undertook to amuse the people. Who does not know what the Paris theatres became? The towns in the provinces followed the movement, constrained by thepréfetsand mayors. Corruption, promoted by books and official addresses, was put in practice in every theatre of the empire. When the immense bazaar of the Universal Exposition was opened, Louis Napoleon invited all the sovereigns of Europe to be present. They had no wish to attend, but yielded to his importunities. They held a grudge against their Amphitryon. That was not the only mark of superiority he affected with respect to them. He proposed a congress to sanction the principles of the French Revolution. He neglectedno opportunity of influencing their policy. He was constantly shaking the thrones of Europe by his democratic pretensions. He believed himself alone to be legitimate, and pitied the other sovereigns who lacked the consecration of universal suffrage. Experience has once more shown us that immense powers may rest on fragile foundations, but the lesson will be of no use to the Bonapartes, who are ready to recommence. Shall it be lost on France?Our revolutions and variouscoups d’étatwithin a century have transformed us into a Cæsarean nation. All our political elements bear the impress of this fatal destiny. The army, the magistracy, the administration, and the schools are disciplining us for this social system. There is no power but the state. Property is no longer managed according to the wishes of the proprietor, but by those of the legislator. Luxury has increased to an astonishing degree. How easily it has pervaded all classes of society! It is the government that has led us to yield to these new requirements of fashion. Economically speaking, luxury is waste of capital, and an unproductive expenditure. Old French society, founded on the right of property and the permanence of families and fortunes, rejected luxuries, superfluities, and useless expense. In everything, it had an eye to the solid and durable. That, in fact, was the character of French industry. The Roman Empire was a stranger to lasting influences and hereditary fortunes. Proscriptions and confiscations made short work of them. Nothing must appear to rival Cæsar, and manifest any power or independence. Christian society pursued and attained a different object. With us, the civil code takes the place of confiscations and proscriptions; it takes care that fortunes are as speedily wasted as acquired; it ruins by periodical liquidations families scarcely formed. In spite of this, the instincts of nature incline us to a certain care of our property. Speedily acquired fortunes, made by commerce, industrial pursuits, or legal transmission, became a source of anxiety to the imperial mind. They might foster independence! Thence the constant preoccupation of the empire to lead the whole nation into luxurious habits by the temptation of pleasures and large salaries. The multiplication of cabarets is an unmistakable evidence of this. Obliged to expend more than they gained, the office-holders remained in servitude. And from one to another the emulation has extended throughout France. Cæsar not only amused the people, but, led away by example, the people sought additional amusements at their own expense. Thus property, idly spent, and lacking the permanence that assures independence, ceased to limit or be an obstacle to Cæsar’s will. All wealth became dependent on the public credit and the stock market, and had an interest in the continuance of Cæsar’s reign. The whole interior policy of the empire was based on this principle. The political institution of luxury kept pace with the theatre and literature.The immorality of Cæsarism may be readily understood. Morality in a nation is solely engendered by domestic life. But the family is thebête noireof Cæsarism. It was by destroying it and assuming its functions that Cæsarism succeeded in training the people. A man, separated from his family and the place where he ought to live, and transported to another region where he is only accountable to the state, a stranger to the people among whom he lives, no longer thinks about hismorality, but the service he must render to the state. How many functionaries, inadmissible in one place on account of tricks frowned upon by public opinion, are sent elsewhere without losing the favor of the government!France was as surprised by the invasion as the old world by the deluge. Let us admire her patience and courage. We must remember, however, that it was not Cæsarism that saved her. The official world had disappeared. What remained rather clogged than aided the movement for repairing our disaster. Our deliverance sprang from the people not enrolled under the official banner. Without a government, France has shown her spirit of unity, and revealed her moral and material resources. It was not only the emperor, but the whole empire, that surrendered its sword to the King of Prussia at Sedan. In the same way, Napoleon surrendered to England after Waterloo. The high functionaries that only existed by the will or caprice of Cæsar, and who only served him by giving up all responsibility, were suddenly left in darkness. The emperor only soughtex officiosupporters. In a country like France, these are always to be found. Messrs. Morny, Billault, Troplong, Rouher, and Ollivier had pliancy of mind enough to say and do anything to palliate and excuse everything. Thus, without any counterpoise, the imperial government consisted in a single will which was intermittent, fluctuating, and a perpetual source of troubles and catastrophes to France. History is not a casualty. It has its laws which control events. It is well to repel invasions; it is better to do away with their cause. Demosthenes replied to the Athenians who sought news of Philip: “Why, of what consequence is it? Should he have perished, you would create another by your dissensions. The Macedonian domination is only the result of Greek anarchy.”The French Empire, like the Roman, is the creation of historic necessities produced by an age of revolutions and the application of principles that only find complete development under an autocratic form. Anarchy, in a proud and powerful nation with a glorious past and a warlike spirit, will always end in military supremacy. Christianity alone was able to check the system of perpetual war kept up by paganism. It framed the law of nations, making them a Christian republic. By the Revolution of 1789, France abandoned this system. The Restoration of 1814 re-established it in part, but in 1830 the European treaties were broken. Europe had to be on its guard against us, and exclude us from its alliances. Louis Napoleon openly and officially expressed his contempt for treaties. With him France took refuge in proud isolation, affecting an intellectual dictatorship, the prelude of wars. War alone, in fact, can impose the will of one nation on another. This reign of armed propagandism has not ceased its manifestations since 1848. The public schools, all the academies, and the entire press came to the aid of Bonapartism. The personal enemies of the emperor were his most active auxiliaries. He was well aware of this. He carefully promoted Carbonarism in Italy, and Jacobinism in France—two terms for expressing the same thing. The attempts against his life only promoted his success, instead of being an obstacle to it. He recognized, so to speak, their justice, for he had taken the oaths of Carbonarism. When he realized that a crisis was at hand, he was not willing for France to escape the Revolution,the reins of which he held with apparent moderation. He successively let loose the press, the clubs, the secret societies, and even the mob. He weakened and degraded authority in the person of his agents, assured the pardon of all political offences, frequently changed his ministers without any reason or pretext, that the people might be convinced that they were all puppets. In this way, and under the pressure of invasion, he seemed preparing for a movement analogous to that of 1792. His death then would have thrown us into a state of anarchy which would probably have brought on the same invasion we have just undergone. He left behind him only reflections of himself. When he disappeared from the scene, all this was effaced. The regency of Eugénie amounted to about as much as the regency of Maria Louisa—vain imitation, and a manifest proof that, apart from the imperial person, there was no imperial government or recognized authority, and that the empire and anarchy were brother and sister.The downfall of the French monarchy plunged France once more into a state of paganism. Our wars and invasions have been of the same character as the wars and invasions of the first centuries of our era. The French Empire had an insatiable thirst to invade Europe. Germany, on her side, has retained a power of expansion that recalls ancient times. She no longer emigratesen masse, but by the indirect ways of modern civilization. She first sends her pioneers. Her tillers of the soil go to the Sclave provinces of Austria and the Russian coasts of the Baltic. By their aptitude for labor, they take the lead, amass capital, and end by controlling the people that receive them. There is a German party in Russia, and this party has a controlling influence over the czars, or Muscovite Cæsars. The Sclave race, more impressible, more poetic, and less tenacious, less laborious, feels set aside by the new settlers. It realizes that it is the victim of its hospitable and beneficent nature. A reaction will soon take place. The czar will be forced to take the national cause in hand. Russia has not uttered its last word. She has been in some sort under foreign influence since she imbibed the corrupt Christianity of Byzantium. It was only under the direction of the French philosophers of the XVIIIth century that she finally became a part of the European world. After the wars of the Revolution and the empire, our influence greatly diminished, and yielded to German influence. Destitute of scientific or literary traditions, Russia sent her young men intended for office to the German universities. They returned with the scientific jargon of the schools, a strong dose of atheism, affiliated with the secret societies, and without any sympathy with the tastes and sentiments of the Sclave race. Thus favored, German influence has increased to such a degree as to cause anxiety in the Russian Empire. In its encroachments on Austria, Germany did not begin with pacific conquests. Silesia, seized by Frederic II., was colonized gradually. Finally, German emigration filled our banks, our counting-rooms, and our railway offices. This tendency to expansion could only be restrained or repressed by our alliance with a great nation. Unfortunately, France affected to be above European law. She pretended to promulgate a new law, a new civilization. She refused, in the name of the principles of 1789, to allow that there were any legitimate sovereigns in Europe. France, plunged intoCæsarism, found a rival in Germany, which had more ancient Cæsarean traditions, and which, less ravaged by revolution, was better organized than we for attack and defence. It is still increasing in population, whereas France, under the rule of economists, diminishes every day. This alone ought to warn French policy of the error into which it has fallen. The German Confederation, the imposing remains of Christian ages, was the safeguard of Europe, by maintaining a peaceful equilibrium in Germany. France and England, unwisely governed, allowed the German Confederation to be dismembered. The Germanic union under Prussia was evidently threatening. Lord Palmerston and Louis Napoleon, statesmen who had no correct notions of Christianity, could not see anything or comprehend anything. It was, however, evident that a peculiar kind of Cæsarism was to spring from this overturning of Germany. A slight knowledge of history and the German character should have been sufficient to convince Europe of this. The diplomacy which, by the treaty of 1856, arraigned the Sovereign Pontiff at its bar, rejoiced at the destruction of the Germanic Confederation, without dreaming that a few years later the Empire of Germany would consign the once powerful nations of England, France, and Russia to the second rank. At the moment of this change, it is not useless to remark how many deadly struggles the Papacy has had with Cæsarism. It was by the diffusion of Christian principles that it laid the foundation of Christian society.The political life of the Papacy has been wholly spent in combating Cæsarism. It struggled against the Roman emperors for three centuries, and then against the heresies of Byzantium. In our age, Napoleon exhausted all his arts and violence on Pius VII. Pius IX. found himself at issue with Louis Napoleon, and Victor Emanuel, the Italian representative of Cæsarism. The contest of the popes with the emperors of Germany is celebrated. It was the Papacy that preserved human liberty throughout the middle ages. Germany had seized the imperial sceptre that had fallen from the hands of the weak successors of Charlemagne. In the XIIIth century, the Cæsarean rule threatened the whole of Europe. Frederic II., more perverse and more able than his namesake of the XVIIIth century, found himself the master of Germany. He triumphed in Italy through the support of the legists, and extended his claims to the rest of Europe. Innocent IV., by issuing the bull of excommunication against Frederic II. at the Council of Lyons, stopped the German Cæsar in his career, and put an end to the invasions of Italy he was constantly making. Italy, under the auspices of the Papacy, displayed a long career of municipal liberty.The development of Cæsarism in France as well as in Germany has followed the overthrow of the temporal power of the Holy See. But the German Empire will always retain an immense superiority over the French Empire. It is less revolutionary, less democratic, less at variance with its past history. It is not impossible that it may combine with the local and municipal institutions of the country. Prussia is far from our absolute centralization, and there is nothing to indicate that she is to be subjected to it. She remains the ally of the great powers of the Continent. She could easily have rallied all Europe against imperial and Byzantine France. Let us not deny it: no victory of Louis Napoleon’s could have secured the left bank ofthe Rhine. The German coalition would very soon have drawn the rest of Europe after it. This struggle of one against all is a necessity of Bonapartism. Nothing can check it. Softness of manners, a refined civilization, pretended condemnation of war, philanthropy bordering on religion, boundless industry and credit, the military incapacity of Louis Napoleon, nor anything else, could have prevented the war from breaking out. “Revolution is war and bankruptcy,” said Royer-Collard. It obeys its nature. It upheld the Bonapartes in spite of a kind of material order and discipline they forced on the people; it required of them an armed propaganda which they were more capable of managing successfully than the republic itself. Louis Napoleon, with his mildness of character, and talent as a writer, desired a peace that would enable him to continue his utopian experiments in journalism. But he was not his own master. He felt that a revolution at home constituted only one-half of his obligations; the other half—revolution abroad—he was also determined to effect, though to his regret. He regarded the bombs of Orsini as a salutary warning, and submitted to his destiny. He extended revolution to Italy and Mexico. He destroyed the influence of Austria. Prussia profited by these disturbances to unite Germany. But Louis Napoleon made a pitiful failure. He dashed against a wall with his eyes shut. The pretext of a Hohenzollern on the Spanish throne was ridiculous, and the legislative corps and senate that countenanced it showed the measure of their political knowledge and independence.It is difficult to comprehend by virtue of what principle or interest he opposed the choice of a Hohenzollern. Had he not rejected the hereditary principle? Had he not aided in overthrowing all the princes of the House of Bourbon who still reigned through this principle? Was not his own power based on election? And what did it matter to France whether that pitiful Spanish crown was on one head rather than another? What gratitude could he expect from those revolutionary sovereigns whose patron or director he constituted himself? He took the petty Subalpine king by the hand, and led him to the Crimea, and to the Congress of Paris, and thence into all the capitals of Italy. His plans were unveiled when he forced the unhappy Victor Emanuel to give his daughter to the imperial cousin. Who then could cherish any illusion as to the result? It was unfolded. Did the revolutionary union of the south spring from it? This union could only be effected by the unity of despotism. Napoleon knew it: his nephew forgot it. Revolutionary nations are necessarily at war or distrustful of one another, as the revolutionary factions of a nation are always contending, unless some master—no matter whether it is an individual or a party—succeeds in suppressing the rivalry.This was the state of the case in our Revolution. Is it not a matter of public notoriety that the name of Napoleon excites only horror and disgust in Spain and Italy?Louis Napoleon’s aim was not to subdue Europe by war, but to effect an internal change of government by means of revolutionary principles. This resulted in exciting all the great powers against him. He thought there would be a revolution in Russia in consequence of the emancipation of the serfs which he recommended to the Czar Alexander. He overthrew the German Confederationthough it was so powerful a guarantee for the safety of France. It was he who made William Emperor of Germany. The overthrow of the Confederation under the circumstances in which it took place necessarily led to the empire, as the overthrow of ancient France led to the imperialrégimethat has lasted till now. We need not be astonished at the efforts of the King of Prussia to re-establish Louis Napoleon. They were accomplices, though Louis Napoleon has been taken for the dupe. Not that he was not conscious of the situation, but he warded off the flashes of reason and common sense he had, and gave himself up to a hallucination. France imitated him, with the conscript fathers of the senate and the legislative corps at its head. Louis Napoleon contended for an idea, and he triumphed after his manner, after the manner of his uncle. Conquered and made prisoner, he was humiliated, not by defeat, which does not humiliate the brave, but by accepting his defeat. He yielded to the conqueror, he surrendered his sword. Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo, but he was not really cast down till he found himself on board theBellérophon. Then he realized who was victor. The lamentations of St. Helena reveal the liberal despot. Louis Napoleon also became an author and a journalist. He dreamed of returning to France. He published at Cassel under the name of his friend, M. de Grécourt, abrochuredesigned to influence Germany in his favor. He had no doubt of being as warmly welcomed by France as Napoleon was when he returned from the island of Elba.There was no change in France. Our social institutions were still standing. The republicans had found nothing to modify in the wonderful machinery of despotism. There was nothing to prevent him from resuming his place. There was the invasion besides. Did the disasters of 1814 prevent Napoleon’s reascendancy in France in 1815? Was there any lack of senators and representatives to welcome Cæsar? Was not the popularity of the uncle the foundation of the nephew’s success? That was the sole cause of Louis Napoleon’s accession. This popularity was nothing more than the result of success. Power and success united and counted the votes, and proclaimed the result. The revolutionary power was not entirely destroyed by the events of 1814 and 1815; it became an organized system, having its regulations, its leaders, its journals, its secret societies, and its permanent committees variously disguised under the forms of beneficence, pleasure, science, etc. No regular government at variance with this many-sided, intangible power could be established. The regular government of France especially—the hereditary monarchy—could not take root again. Public opinion and enthusiasm are like stage machinery that rises and falls. We witnessed the workings of this machinery from 1848 to 1852. The inventors did not even give themselves the trouble to hide the workings from the eyes of the public. This reign of opinion has continued. The word of command from the emperor was echoed by the ministers, and from them by thepréfets,sous-préfets, and mayors. The entire administration in all its gradations walked in the same footsteps. By the public works, loans, and illusory promises, the mass of electors were so fascinated that they could refuse nothing to a government that was promoting such benefits. Universal suffrage is the character in the comedy—the simple, good-natured Demos of Aristophanes. Inreality, it is the emperor—he who has theimperium, individually or by a number of individuals, who votes at the general election. In the Cæsarean system, the emperor alone acts, but he acts in the name of the people, and as the representative of the people. He is the voice of the people. This must not be lost sight of when we judge the acts of Louis Napoleon.In hisbrochure, he claims the good-will of the King of Prussia and Germany, because it was France alone that desired the war. He did not desire it; he was not responsible for it. This was pleading his own imbecility and the culpability of France. What! he did not set France against Germany? He did not break the treaties of 1815, or officially condemn them? He did not constantly propose the policy of his uncle as an example to France? He followed it without condemning an act or a principle. The Jacobinism of his later years was a mere imitation of the liberal ideas his uncle brought back from the island of Elba, and continued to cultivate at St. Helena—ideas that M. Thiers, in his voluminous compilation concerning the empire, regarded as serious! This was why Louis Napoleon declared him “the national historian,” and presided at the obsequies of Béranger, “the national poet.” This Bonapartism in verse and prose had only one practical aim—the conquest of the Rhine provinces. That was the favorite topic of old soldiers and the zealous members of the imperialentourage. People of more sense, who were not overscrupulous, resigned themselves to it as a necessity of the situation. Ever since 1852, it had been thought there would be a sudden blow aimed at Belgium or Germany. Was not Austria attacked in 1859 without any reason or pretext, and, it may be said, without a declaration of war, and in violation of all the laws of nations? When and where did universal suffrage countenance this? Where was it discussed by the ten million voters? What authority did they give their representatives? The imperialists and liberals have refused the electors the right which they enjoyed in 1789 to give directions to those they elected. The member represents, then, only himself, though individually he may have been acceptable to his constituents at the time of the election. The elector is not free in his vote, because he does not know his so-called deputy. And these representatives of Cæsarism have never been free. No sooner are they nominated, than they forget their orders and electors, and only aim at “the glory of obedience” to Cæsar, like the senators of Tiberius.Louis Napoleon played to perfection the game of Cæsarism. Conqueror or conquered, he always kept a foothold. Victory immortalized him, and assured perhaps his son’s future career. And defeat was not to be imputed to him. As the representative of the people, he was only a passive agent. A docile instrument of the passions and sentiments of the people, he sacrificed himself. Did not this entitle him to the gratitude of his fellow-citizens? He regarded the republic as less popular than himself, and condemned by universal suffrage. Besides, he affected to personify in a supreme degree the republican element. It was not with respect to France he was anxious. He knew that the Cæsarean constitution of France left a sure way always open of regaining the throne. It was by foreigners he was overthrown. He preferred this fall to the necessity of presiding over new disasters. Hewas not sorry, either, to see the city of Paris, which of late had been constantly opposed to the empire, and whose enmity daily increased under its liberal laws, chastised by Prussia. King William thus effected acoup d’étatwhich did not injure the emperor, and made a return to despotism easier than at the beginning of the empire.La Situation, the Bonaparte organ at London, insinuated that Prussia had an interest in allying itself with Louis Napoleon, in order to reconstruct the map of Europe. And it did not conceal that the neutral countries, Belgium and Holland, were to pay for this reconciliation. In this way, Bonapartism, though apparently crushed, showed signs of life, and fostered its hopes. This was a sign it was not morally subdued. It was overcome only to be restored. But the French republic was not in a condition to restore it, because it confounded itself with it. It must be ascertained if Europe feared Bonapartism or France. Bonapartism aside, France is now a really peaceful, honest, Christian nation. She has only been formidable since 1789 through the principles of dissolution she has carried within herself and diffused abroad by means of newspapers, secret societies, and armies.The idea of giving Holland to Prussia, and Belgium to France, was worthy of Louis Napoleon. Would Europe allow it? Prussia already preponderates. France would gain nothing. She could not rise from the inferiority into which she has fallen through late events. The humiliation that Cæsarism has inflicted on our country is not a thing of yesterday. Napoleon stated the problem clearly: France must subject Europe to revolution, or disappear before a torrent of invasions. These two alternatives have been successively more or less realized. The Restoration gave peace once more to France and to Europe. France, regaining her rank, menaced no one, and sustained herself by her alliances. She fell again in the Revolution of 1830. Foreign sympathy was withdrawn from us. All the alliances were broken off. The various governments, stunned by the rebound of the Revolution, stood on their guard. The monarchy of July sought to favor revolution moderately abroad, and to direct it with skill at home. From that time, Europe formed a coalition against us. During the first ten years of the Revolution of July, the public mind was disturbed as to the possibility of a great war with Germany. The liberal party used every effort to bring it on, without any reason certainly, in order to fulfil one of the conditions of the revolutionary programme, which is an armed propaganda. It was with such views that the fortifications of Paris were conceived by M. Thiers. The equilibrium of Europe was destroyed, therefore, to our sole injury. The empire developed the seeds of revolution sown by the government of July. France descended lower than in 1830; she even lost all regard to decency, by giving herself up to the revolutionary current. The distinguished men of talent who devoted themselves to the service of Louis Philippe withdrew from the scene, and were replaced by a crowed of nobodies. Assemblies, ministers, and emperor entered on such a contradictory course that one might believe our country had fallen into its dotage.The Mexican war made America aware of our political weakness; and, in the East, our diplomacy lost the last remnant of its influence by taking a stand apart from Catholicism.The war of 1859 set Italy against us—a country so lately governed by princes favorable to France. The Italian unity and German unity consigned France to a secondary rank. Finally, the commercial treaties have made us subservient to England. Thus, in renouncing all idea of conquest, Louis Napoleon did not give up disturbing Europe. France served as the instrument of this work, and ended by being the victim. The material disproportion of forces could only produce a catastrophe. Europe was arming its men, while France, under Louis Napoleon’s direction, was plunged in revolutionary metaphysics. It does not require any great sagacity, however, to perceive that a revolutionary nation could not be in a condition to sustain a conflict with a nation that has remained true to conservative principles. What could be effected by combining all these shattered elements? How could we depend on these bruised reeds?So rapid a decadence under the influence of anti-social principles has permitted neighboring nations to renounce the traditions that bound them to us. The admiration they felt for the superiority of our civilization yielded to the fear of falling under a despotism as unprincipled as it was senseless. It was from the hotbed of Bonapartism, the inheritor of revolutionary traditions, that have sprung the various revolutions which from 1814 to 1830 ensanguined all Europe. The republic of 1848, exhausted in the course of ten months, consigned its stock of revolutionism to Louis Bonaparte. He made it yield with usury. Until 1859, he hesitated and felt his way, being fettered by public sentiment, which was more conservative and Christian than he could have wished. He skilfully got rid of the honest people around him, and, once started, he never stopped again. From that fatal period, he was no longer his own master: he was the ready tool of the Revolution. It is surprising that the Bonapartes are not satisfied with reigning over France; they think they have a right to all Europe—a right to substitute the sovereignty of the people and elective governments for all the hereditary monarchies. The mission they claim secures the complicity of all the malcontents. The rulers assuredly take note of all this danger. They understand that their enemy in France is not France itself, but the Revolution.The German Empire rekindles the fears that Louis XIV. inspired and Napoleon made us realize. Owing to a remnant of feudalism, it is founded on a much more solid basis than the French Empire was. When it attains its utmost limit, there will really be only one power in Europe. Even now, no one would think of denying its preponderance. The balance of power can only be preserved by the alliance of the secondary powers—France, Russia, Austria, and England. No one disputes the superiority of Prussia. In order to attain it, it would have been sufficient to be preserved during the half-century just elapsed from the revolutions that have so lowered France and Austria. Prussian statesmen labored energetically to unite Germany. By directing the mental training in the universities, the secret societies, the press, and the diplomacy, they have shown a system and energy that in France would have enabled statesmen of another stamp to bewilder and crush the genius of France, and bring our nation down to the dust. The Napoleonic Empire was one vast treason. It only allured France in order to deliver it up to foreigners. By givingher the choice between universal rule and annihilation, he placed her in an absurd position, and subjected her to certain ruin for the greater glory of Napoleon. It may here be remarked that no man ever made a more lavish use than Napoleon of the word “glory,” which the pagans so constantly had on their lips. It was comprehensible to people that lived to serve masters who, having all that could gratify pride and power in this world, aspired to glory as the supreme recompense. It was under similar circumstances that Napoleon and his nephew sought and obtained glory. Their names are imperishable. They are connected with catastrophes human memory will forever retain. They refused to reign peaceably by fulfilling their duties as sovereigns. Rejecting a divine authority, and recognizing no higher power, they made use of the people as the instrument of their passions. One had a passion for conquering Europe, the other for revolutionizing it. And France had to promote these designs, be drained of men under the First Empire, and be revolutionized under the Second, in order that the revolutionary contagion might be spread throughout Europe. War, coming to the aid of this work, led to the third invasion—the crowning achievement of the Third Empire.The sole prejudice the French manifest in favor of the empire is that it maintained the honor of our army, and restored order. This is only true with respect to the Revolution. For the Revolution was absolute disorder. And the aim of the empire was not to substitute order for revolution, but to organize the Revolution by making it possible to the vulgar mind. It proved, therefore, wholly incompetent to the work of reorganizing society. Napoleon succeeded republican anarchy, and would have left us in it at his downfall, had it not been for the House of Bourbon, which saved us from foreigners and revolution. The nephew likewise succeeded his mother, the republic, whose death he hastened. And everybody knows that his natural death at the Tuileries would have been followed by a triumphant republican rising at Paris. He made every preparation for that. The republic of the 4th of September, 1870, was established almost as a matter of course, without violence, without noise. Therégentehad orders not to oppose anything. General Montauban declared to all who would listen to him that he should only offer moral resistance to the expected demonstration of the 4th of September. In fact, after Wissembourg, there was no imperial government. That government, then, was anarchical in essence and administrative by accident. It only rose momentarily above anarchy, and speedily sank into it again. It dreaded nothing more than a peace that would strengthen institutions, create new influences, and diminish Cæsar’s personality. Louis Napoleon was perpetually remodelling the different institutions, and without any apparent object. It was in this way he did away even with the traditions of the First Empire, and subjected the army to so many ridiculous experiences.It doubtless seems singular—to accuse the uncle and the nephew of anarchy, when their putting down anarchy was precisely their title to govern France. But anarchy is not the only feature of the empire: there was despotism besides; and with these original principles there was an ingredient of political order which we do not deny. When this side of things became apparent, the peoplethrew themselves into the emperor’s arms, and hailed him as the saviour of the country. When all was lost, they took hold of the first thing that presented itself. In our modern France, the empire and the Napoleons are the only memories capable of fixing every eye and directing every vote at a given moment. The salvage obtained, half the work remains to be accomplished. In the latter part of its task, the empire always fails. Its principles hinder it; they only favor order under conditions which prevent its solidity. Why this special hatred kept up by the Bonapartes against the House of Bourbon? The Bonapartes have nothing against the Bourbons; our kings had long lost their power when the Bonapartes seized it. There is no personal difference between them and the Bourbons. We must look beyond to find the connection between the cause and effect. The Bourbons and the Bonapartes are above all that is individual and personal. They represent two opposite causes. By the intrigues of Louis Napoleon, the offshoots of the House of Bourbon have disappeared from the thrones of southern Europe. They are a living protestation against revolutions. The Bourbons have in vain allied themselves with the revolutionary party, and ruined their own cause; they never succeeded in gaining the good-will of their adversaries, so effectually have their principles, which they cannot divest themselves of, protected the monarchical cause against themselves! The House of Bourbon, in its downfall at Naples and Madrid, was elevated by its fall. The dethroned Neapolitan king has shown himself more Christian, more kingly, than before he fell. The Spanish monarchy, by the mouth of Don Carlos, has expressed sentiments truly worthy of a king, and contrasts with the attitude of the elective and liberal king who has just left. The House of Bourbon has been purified by the crucible of revolutions, because, in spite of its failings and misfortunes, it represents the principle of right. The Bonapartes remain true to themselves. They do not vary in theirrôleor in their pretensions, and remain attached to principles irreconcilable with the peace of France and all Europe. The recall of the Bourbons is an European necessity. It will be more easily effected when the wall of prejudice, which has barred the way, is wholly broken down. This European war had been foreseen from the beginning of the empire. Louis Napoleon, in throwing the responsibility of it on France, acknowledged that he yielded to the fatality of his position. What could be a more decisive proof, and what other could be wished, that the empire is war? No one in France desired war. Nothing was ready. The liberal party curtailed every year the budget of the army. Prussia gave us no excuse for aggression; all thechancelleriesadvised peace. It was then that, a prey to the evil genius of his family, to obsessions that deprived him of sense and foresight, Louis Napoleon made a sudden attack on Germany, without looking to see if he was followed, or how he was followed.Our fault was in not being ready, say the Bonapartists. That is an illusion. At no price could the empire have been ready. The military organization, weakened by perpetual changes, the corruption and lack of discipline diffused among the soldiers and under-officers by means of the public journals and secret societies, the limited resources available under a system which affecteda kind of communism in the civil order, and constantly encroached on future supplies, rendered reform impossible. Everything set aside the thought of attempting it. The budget paid 400,000 men, and our army did not really exceed 200,000! A reform in France on the Prussian model would have required several years and the overthrow of all our modern institutions. Can we imagine, with the other expenditures of our budget, eight hundred millions more for the army? Prussia has been half a century in achieving its present organization. Germany has its gradation of ranks and classes. A numerous nobility forms the basis of its military institutions, and furnishes, in time of war as well as peace, the natural leaders of the whole nation. And we Frenchmen—we are still under the elective system, which is that of children at their sports. Leaders who are improvised remain necessarily without authority, unless they have been prepared for theirrôleby their previous life. Our military organization corresponds to our social organization: and it is the empire, a militaryrégime, but also a Saint-Simonianrégime, that has co-operated actively in the military dissolution of France. It was by being mixed with Saint-Simonism that it returned to the extreme notions of 1789 and 1793. This socialism that was to sustain the empire against the clergy, the conservative party, and the republicans, did it weigh one ounce in his favor? At the first reverse, all the socialism in authority disappeared. And Louis Napoleon has had no adversaries more implacable than all these socialists whom he fed, and who are making up for their former servility by their present abuse.We must not weary of meditating on these words: France fights for an idea. This idea, under various names, is the Revolution, socialism, and the principles of 1789. Louis Philippe, that emperor on a small scale, and that “best of republics,” pursued the same crooked way. He classed his wars and foreign intrigues under the mild term of “liberalism.” He propagated in his way, by the assistance of the Assemblies, the principles of the Revolution. He gradually but persistently violated the treaties of 1815, which had put an end to twenty-five years of social war in Europe. It was in violation of these treaties that he ascended the throne. He interfered in Belgium in the name of the Revolution; he aided greatly in the downfall of the Bourbons of Spain; he occupied Ancona, in spite of the Holy See, and indicated a course to Gregory XVI. that was identical with the terms of Louis Napoleon’s letter to Edgar Ney. Finally, less Catholic than M. Guizot, he applauded the ruin of the Sonderbund, and refused Prince von Metternich the support of France in protecting the interests of the smaller cantons, our friends and ancient allies. By his inaction, he favored the revolutionary cause when he did not serve it with his forces. The revolutionary triumph at Berne soon extended to Paris, and Louis Philippe had to withdraw more speedily than he came. He propagated revolutionism in Europe during the whole course of his reign, with less display than Louis Napoleon, but with as much perversity. Certainly, neither Prussia, nor Austria, nor Russia were deceived as to the cause and tendency of the Revolution of 1830. They protested in vain. England alone took sides with Louis Philippe: thence the subserviency of our policy to that of England. Louis Philippe made the most of that ally of the Revolution: throughparty spirit, he sacrificed even the interest and honor of France. We recognize there the soldier of 1789, the former usher of the Jacobin club. And Louis Napoleon, for the same cause, humiliated himself more profoundly. He put his ministers, his assemblies, his diplomacy, our commerce, and our industries at the feet of England. And he certainly was not ignorant that England would never send him a shilling or a man. But he knew that England protected revolution on the Continent. He bound her to the revolutionary cause by the Crimean war and the commercial treaty. England powerfully seconded it in Italy and Spain. It was Bonapartism that English policy has developed even while thinking it was making use of it. Coming events will tell whether England has not, by violating her traditions, hastened a decline already evident and even alarming.It is possible that, by rejecting the pretended English alliance, which was never anything but a lure, France would have been forced to closer relations with the Continent, and to conform to the European law of nations, which would have saved Europe from great calamities. The sovereigns, then, have some interest in withdrawing France from English complicity. The Restoration alone understood the practice of French policy, and alone maintained a firm attitude with respect to England. Its whole policy, interior as well as exterior, was national and uninfluenced by England. The conquest of Algiers was the most brilliant result of that policy. The Restoration made successful wars, and wars Europe had no reason to complain of; for they were carried on with the consent of the powers, and to re-establish the law of nations settled by the treaties of 1815. Such was the character of the war with Spain in 1823. Peace reigned then among all the great powers of the Continent, and it was solely to the House of Bourbon it was owing; that house overthrown, a spirit of revolt broke out on all sides, and made thrones totter. What profit did France derive from it? Condemning herself by her institutions to perpetual war, France pronounced her own sentence of death. She conquered under Napoleon only by the ability of her leader, when she found herself contending with one or two nations. She successively defeated each of her enemies. At length her armies were made up of recruits from every country in Europe; she incorporated the vanquished through the same policy as ancient Rome. It was an army composed of soldiers from all parts of Europe that Napoleon led into Russia. The disaster of 1812 freed Germany. Then, for the first time, a serious coalition was arranged, and Napoleon was defeated by the combined forces in 1813, 1814, and 1815. Louis Napoleon attacked Russia and Austria separately. He isolated Prussia from the great powers, but his policy of nationality brought on German unity. And it was the whole of Germany that confronted him when he merely wished to confront the King of Prussia. The King of Prussia, had he been defeated, would have appealed to the Emperor of Austria and the czar, who would not have failed him. Our revolutionary tendencies will always draw a coalition upon us. The late events have weakened the revolutionary party in Europe to such a degree that the support it offered us, and on which we relied, will be of no more avail. Europe, surprised by the outburst of 1789, yielded to our arms for twenty years. She then united, and, imitating the imperial military policy, carriedit to a degree of perfection that left us behind. What remains for France and all Europe but to agree in re-establishing peace by conformity of political principles? And in 1873, as in 1815, this peace depends solely on the recall of the House of Bourbon to France. It is to this work that Europe is invited if she does not wish to perpetuate a revolution which, after ruining France, will not leave one of the great powers standing.The French Revolution has till now been the object of public attention. Princes and people have bestirred themselves for a century to oppose or sustain it. The inability of the principles of 1789 to establish anything, and the invasion of 1870, have opened the eyes of France, and better disposed it to make terms with Europe henceforth. But beside the French Revolution, now growing powerless, rises a political element that suddenly overawes and disturbs European equilibrium. A policy of defence and preservation ought to be directed against the Empire of Germany, not to destroy it, but to guarantee the safety of other governments by a general alliance and a new law of nations. France will never declare war against Europe again. Louis Napoleon is the last to make such a challenge. Personally, there was nothing warlike in him; but he represented a system that tends to war. To him this war was an amusement, a distraction. To divert himself by a general war, in order to escape for a moment from national affairs that perplexed him! The diversion was powerful; as well blow out one’s brains to drive awayennui. The mass of the French people did not participate in the madness of the Bonaparte system: they are victims as well as Europe. Only we have come to that phase of the system which is more particularly humiliating to France. The three great allied powers of the North have nothing more to fear from France. But this alliance of the North is no longer on terms of equality. We say great powers! There is now but one great power—Germany. And she necessarily threatens Austria and Russia by her military strength and by her expansive power, through her hardy and laborious race, that is filling the United States with swarms of colonizers, extending to the neighboring Sclave countries in Russia, and putting forth its shoots even on French soil. German preponderance will pursue its course. It is not universal rule, but a preponderance that will tend to it, unless a union of the secondary powers oppose it with a strong, resisting force. Germany herself will not be wanting in prudence. Her reign will last its time; it is sure of only a short triumph. In twenty-five years, Russia, in consequence of the progress of science and industry, will be able to subjugate Germany. Germany will then have need of France.By a law of Providence, nations that rise from an uncertain beginning seem to attain their height suddenly, and almost as speedily begin to decline. We Frenchmen have had our day of power and glory in the middle ages. The age of Louis XIV. was our era of intellectual superiority and political preponderance. We have come down from that pinnacle; there is no denying it. Germany, by its material strength, is rising far above the point we attained. England, France, Russia, and Austria no longer have any influence, by their diplomacy and alliances, over the hundreds of petty princes and peoples that constituted the German Confederation. They are shut out of Germany. Any pretension to interferencewould make them a laughing-stock. All these powers, Russia excepted, have pursued a foolish policy, and are receiving the recompense due to their shrewdness. Inheritor of Richelieu, the French Revolution so disturbed Germany as to overthrow all its princes. The German nation has survived, and by the concentration of its unity has acquired a power of aggression and conquest it was incapable of under its former organization. The Revolution of 1789 resulted in the immediate elevation of England, which from the third rank rose almost to the first—a rank she would still have, had she not replaced the policy of Pitt and Burke by the policy of Lord Palmerston and his followers. Louis Napoleon created the Empire of Germany, but England applauded his course. All her statesmen have rejoiced in the humiliation of France that has resulted from it. Those debaters and merchants have advocated the establishment of an immense military empire in the heart of Europe, without perceiving that peaceful and industrious England would thereby lose its influence. She is destined to decline still further. Her influence on the Continent depended on the old balance of power, and preponderated through her alliance with Austria. In 1859, she betrayed Austria, and shamefully disavowed the treaties of 1815. Austria turned to Russia, or to Prussia, or to both at once.The old kingdoms, the historic nations, are breaking in pieces. In reality, it is the Prussian Empire that has been founded, rather than the German Empire restored. Germany retains enough of Catholic life to give her a tone of moral and intellectual grandeur that render her superior to Russia and the United States. There is nothing to disturb her but the future, and a future not far distant, if the people of Southern Europe continue to abandon themselves to revolutionary principles. We are far from believing that France can never rise again. She rose after 1815: the same causes produce the same effects. What concerns Europe is that France will never resume herrôleof agitator. Bonapartism is still powerful. It prevails through the habits and necessities which concentrate and direct the whole political, moral, and mental activity of France. This storm over, the name of Napoleon will again disturb the public mind, and unite the suffrage. The republic of 1870 is dragging along in the old beaten track of imperialism. It has merely set up the men of 1848 or 1830—old, worn-out functionaries, whose incapacity has increased rather than diminished. It is time for a reaction against childish prejudices. The motto of the liberal school is: Revolution and Progress! It is well to know that a revolution is, etymologically speaking, a turn back. Our liberals cling to the days of 1789. In a few years, they will be a century behindhand. France rapidly rose from her helplessness of 1815 to the Spanish war of 1823, and the conquest of Algiers. Then a fatal revolution arrested its progress, and it fell back to a state bordering on that of ‘89. Louis Philippe kept us in subjection eighteen years. He was overthrown by the socialism which he restrained, but which with a bound returned to the theories of ‘93 in the name of progress! These sudden relapses disorganize and destroy the social machine. The Restoration alone was successful, because it was the regular government. The House of Bourbon is able to give interior peace to France. It is not the government of a party, for it does not derive its title from the popular vote. It appealsto the conscience and reason like a natural law and a national necessity. It has no other ambition but to make France once more a Christian kingdom by ensuring the general peace of Europe on the basis of a new public law. What great power will dare refuse her its aid, when so strongly interested in the same cause?

THE EMPIRE.FROM THE REVUE DU MONDE CATHOLIQUE.Theimperial form of government has sprung up in France within seventy years, and been only slightly modified by the different administrations that have succeeded each other. And yet nothing could be more at variance with the traditions, customs, and genius of the nation. Thisrégimeis of foreign origin. It is the recrudescence of the conquest of Gaul by Julius Cæsar. It has subjected us again to a yoke analogous to the condition we were in after Gaul lost its independence. The veil that blinded us to its real nature has fallen off in the shock of momentous events. It is important to reassert a truth that will now be better comprehended. The historians of the Revolution have endeavored to show that the revolutionary movement of 1789 was purely French, and the result of national necessity; but the very violence that accompanied it proves the contrary. Natural developments are effected peacefully. Louis XVI., so far from resisting the torrent, seconded it, and abandoned himself to it. Nothing shows so fully what an effort was necessary for the triumph of the Revolution as the impossibility of its succeeding by regular means and the assent of the country. It took France by assault. It profited by circumstances, but this does not change the nature of its deeds or the character of its success. We do not deny that this pagan and Cæsarean tradition might have found its way into France with the monarchy, but it is certain that, however restrained it had been by Christian principles, it all at once broke through its bounds. Half the members of the Constituent Assembly belonged to the legal profession. Imbued with the absolutist teachings of Roman law, they energetically sought to apply them. The Revolution recalls ancient Greco-Roman days; there is nothing Christian about it. What is the sovereignty of the people but the very principle that laid the foundation of despotism in Greece? The title of “citizen” implies that all Frenchmen belong to the same city or town. This risingen masse, and the notion that every Frenchman is a soldier, are wholly pagan. The legislative corps—that means the people make their own laws, only they do so by proxy. What! the people not exercise their special prerogative! In ancient times, though the people only amounted to a few thousand voters, they never fully enjoyed the legislative power. Besides, in consequence of the institution of slavery, every shade of democracy was equivalent to an aristocracy. The legislators of 1789 only recognized the slavery of citizens with respect to the state, which induced them to create a power strong enough to counterbalance and represent their ten millions of constituents.Their proscriptions, denunciations, conspiracies, and struggles recall the time of Marius and Sylla. It is worthy of notice that in the revolutionary documents the heroes of Athens and Rome replace the saints of the calendar. This imitation isextremely amusing. A religion utterly pagan follows. A Pantheon is opened to modern divinities, and great men deified. Catholicism undergoes a persecution unsurpassed by the persecutions of the emperors of the first three centuries. It alone is excluded from the Pantheon. Under the empire, this imitation is so striking that it is impossible to mistake it. The Napoleonic era recalls that of the Cæsars. In this new civilization, or ancient civilization revived, new terms are necessary to express the changes made. Political language is modified. First we have consuls, then tribunes, then a senate, and at last an emperor. The senatus-consultum keeps pace with the plebiscitum. The subdued provinces are governed by prefects. The judges are merely Napoleon’s delegates. The whole of this organization is of foreign, not French, origin. Our history presents no parallel to it. And the reality corresponds with the appearances: it is the engrafting of absolute power on the sovereignty of the people. For the emperor never disguised the source of his authority. He always assumed to be the representative of the people. Like Augustus and Tiberius, he derived the imperial inviolability from the tribunitian character with which he was invested. The empire had itsnoblesse, but anoblesseof titles and decorations similar to that of the Lower Empire. All independence was denied thisnoblesse. The army was likewise organized after the manner of the Roman legion. There were no longer any local distinctions. Each regiment was composed of a confused mixture of the various French peoples. The officers even did not belong to their regiments. They knew, in their nomadic life, only the will of Cæsar, on whom alone they depended, and who transported them from one regiment to another, and from one place to another. Passive instruments, they had no will of their own. Therefore, they were ready for anything.Formerly, the army could not be employed against the nation. It represented the different social elements, and enjoyed the independence natural to these elements. The officers retained their independence, for they served at their own expense from a sense of duty. The administration, the bar, and the army under the empire depended on one individual. Neither local customs, nor municipal corporations, nor right of property could withstand this despotism. A universal levelling under the name of equality smoothed away every obstacle before Cæsar. What rank could stand before the formidable title of the sovereignty of the people? This Cæsarean power found no embodiment in one of French origin. It fell to an Italian, a Roman, to one who rivalled Plutarch’s heroes. This Italian assumed control of the Revolution without ceasing to be Italian, or rather Roman; for Roman he was, a cosmopolite. His aim was to restore the Roman Empire, or the Empire of the West. The French nation was to be the means of universal conquest, as the Gauls in the hands of his predecessors, the Cæsars. Of old France he preserved no vestige. And he carried into Italy his achievements in France. He extended the Revolution to Spain. There was nothing French in a single characteristic of his genius. And his race have obstinately pursued the imperial career which he opened. His nephew, like himself, a mixture of astuteness, violence, boundless ambition, utopianism, literary tastes, and fatalism, renewed the glory of the empire. Louis Napoleon also belonged to all lands. Italian, Swiss, German, English, American—he hadsomething of them all. He spoke all languages as well as the French, and his French was that of a refugee. During his reign, he assembled around him none but foreigners. His apartments were never clear of the outlandish people he had become acquainted with in his wanderings. He loved to converse with them, to tell them his plans. And these adventurers enjoyed being with him. They found him as utopian as ever, as unchanged in his notions, and the phenomenon interested them. No Frenchman of note consented to serve him. France was given up to foreigners. They penetrated everywhere, and took possession of the country. Imperial cosmopolitanism attracted them, and sheltered them, and overloaded them with favors. French policy became English, Italian, American. The denationalization of France was effected by the laws, public schools, new manners, and the transformation of Paris into an European capital of pleasures and the arts: France disappeared. This system was overthrown when, arrived at the highest pitch of madness, Louis Napoleon, after effecting the unity of Italy, so powerfully aided King William in setting up the new Empire of Germany as a rival to France. He sacrificed France to the triumph of the imperial idea in Italy and Germany.The Bonaparte family is completely destitute of patriotism. Its cosmopolitan character is constantly asserting itself. Louis Napoleon’s foreign policy was essentially anti-French. His constant desire to effect the unity of Italy and that of Germany was the wish of an alien. Our interior legislation became no less opposed to the national character. What is the civil code but the systematization of principles laid down in the Digest? The right of property restricted by the legislator, family rights suppressed for the benefit of Cæsar, and property, as well as individuals, placed under administrative direction—all this is Bonapartism as well as Cæsarism. Outside of the central power, there was no authority possessing any freedom of action in France. No municipal body was safe from dissolution. No corporation was allowed to stand alone. Obedience became the lot of the French; which does not imply order and unanimity, for the government, with contradictory aims, and without any real permanence, imposed laws that were contradictory and impracticable. The distinguishing feature of Bonapartism is the union of liberal theories with absolute power. In spite of universal suffrage and deliberative assemblies, despotism increased and was strengthened. It even relied on the opposing and controlling influences it created. The senate and the legislative corps were subservient to the empire, and sustained it. The idea of equality and liberty constantly held out by high imperial functionaries contributed to the popularity of the Napoleons. Under the laterégime, Prince Jerome Napoleon was charged with representing the democratic side of the imperial government. But we know now, by the revelations of the papers found, that his opinions always coincided with the emperor’s. This was what may be called playing into each other’s hands. The tip of the ear shows itself in those liberal speeches which were apparently most hostile to the government in such a way that no one who knows how to read can fail to perceive it. Under his forcible language is concealed a faint, half-expressed, vague opinion, but which is clearly and positively opposed to the rights of assemblies. What enthusiastic liberalism did notM. de Persigny manifest! According to him, provincial liberty was upheld by thepréfets, whom he styled, on one occasion, the fathers of the departments. This sally caused much laughter, but M. de Persigny did not laugh. This same minister bethought himself of some conflicting elements that had evaded the superintending eye of Cæsar. It occurred to him to place his master officially at the head of the secret societies, and he transformed free-masonry into an imperial institution.The despotism that has weighed on France for seventy years is unknown to the rest of Europe. We do not say that other nations have not undergone various degrees of despotism, but the despotism of a dictatorship founded on the sovereignty of the people is a privilege France alone has enjoyed. A dictatorship, that institution of republican Rome, has been known here since 1789. Successive governments have been set up in the name of the people; they have all been ephemeral; they have acknowledged no other will but their own—at least, in the beginning. The dictatorship is renewed every ten years. At Rome, before the empire, it has been calculated that every three years and a half a dictatorship was established, which lasted six months or thereabouts. Our situation, therefore, is preferable. It may, however, be questioned if it is the ideal of a Christian nation. Louis Napoleon became the open apologist of Julius Cæsar: he took sides against the Gauls and Franks, who were our ancestors. This audacity excited universal astonishment. The Romans from the beginning were accustomed to absolute power and anarchy. In the vast series of revolutions that make up their history, we find no fixed form of government. The consuls, prætors, and tribunes at Rome, and in the provinces the proconsuls and governors, exercised unlimited power. The emperor was only a perpetual dictator. Roman civilization was absolute power opposed to the liberties of foreign and barbarous nations who preserved a primitive social organization, and lived under patriarchal institutions. The Roman historians acknowledge that the barbarians fought for liberty. The Romans governed the provinces as, at a later period, the Turks governed the countries they conquered. Science and literature have depicted their sanguinary course with brilliant sophistry, and erected it into a system. There is no doubt that the thousands of jurisconsults who devoted their talents to the empire never questioned the legitimacy of Cæsarism. They did not even comprehend German liberty. They often spoke of it with a rare ignorance.Tacitus sometimes forgets the fidelity with which he has described the manners of the Germans. He passes this singular judgment on a people of Thrace whose independent spirit he mentions:Ne regibus parere nisi ex libidine soliti[169]—they obey their kings only according to their caprice or humor. To us this has no sense. Tacitus sees that these people obey sometimes, but not always. He does not perceive the link that connects these two facts. To obey through humor or caprice is not to obey at all. What is their legal obligation? It is sufficient to examine their barbarous institutions. The barbarous king is neither a dictator nor consul: he is like a father. His authority is limited by other heads of families and by their customs. The tribe obeys, but only after discussing the point in the assemblies of the nation.The people obey when the king has received the necessary approval of the established authorities. There is not, as under the Roman government, a man who rules, and a nation that obeys. This dualism does not exist among the barbarians. The king is a part of the nation, as a father is of his family, which attributes a high dignity to both king and father, but not great power. Unity of action, in this case, comes by the concurrence of wills. This concurrence is permanent, and the easier because nature, through the family ties, softens difference of opinion, lessens rivalries, and produces men of incontestable authority whose very birth commands respect. Their laws are less severe and stringent, but liberty reigns, and society is based on the affections, and not on the mere predominance of force. Tacitus would be more intelligible if he said that the people only obeyed after giving their approval according to forms which custom had established. Strictly speaking, the wordlibidomight imply either consent or assent. The idea is somewhat obscure. But there is nothing to authorize a translator to say the people obeyed their king only through caprice or humor. Tacitus finds it difficult to comprehend the organization of the tribe, and does not regard it as of much account. He judges like a Roman who has a clear notion only of military rule and passive obedience. In spite of himself, however, he dwells on these barbarians, who inspire him with a kind of terror. He points out the effects of their patriarchal institutions from which the liberty of modern nations has sprung. His books are for us a title of honor. Our ancestors figure therein as conquered: their features are changed, but not unrecognizable. We love to find proofs that the traditions of liberty among the French race preceded the importation of despotism.Despotism came to us by the way of revolution. This will not surprise any one. The empire is the highest and most definite form of despotism among civilized nations. Our enlightenment, or pretended enlightenment, so far from having any repugnance to it, evidently led to it. Are we more enlightened than the Greeks and Romans? Are our rulers better versed in art, law, or literature than the rulers of Athens or Rome? The idea of despotism has been so infused into the modern mind that even the extreme partisans of liberty can conceive of nothing but despotism as the basis of their theories. M. Jules Simon, the worthy successor of M. Duruy, dreams of subjecting France to the communist system of Spartan education. And hardly any one ventures to oppose him. What notions of liberty have children reared by the state? They are brought up in the official world, imbibe its sentiments and the ideas of the state, and reproduce them in their public and private life. We who cannot consent to the suppression of the family are desirous that children should bear the impress of family influences. The family yoke is sweet and light; the assimilation of children to their parents is easy. The liberty of children is guaranteed. Family authority is a less burdensome restraint than that of the state, and the multitude of families creates a sort of counterpoise, so that their minds are not formed by a single will, but develop according to their various aptitudes. If any one objects that the state teaches no doctrines, we reply that to teach none is to teach some. In fact, this is really the source of indifference, or the system of practical atheism. Is not this the doctrine that is agitating France?Our government has been copied from the Cæsarean government. Everywhere is to be seen a gradation of functionaries who receive their orders from Paris, and are not opposed by any provincial action capable of resisting them. It is useless to enumerate all the public or collective offices in order to show how they are combined under a single impulsion. No country in Europe has attained to such perfection of the imperialrégime. The Roman Empire even has been surpassed, for we have the advantage of the press, railways, and telegraphs, which increase the power of the state to an indefinite degree. New ideas have also arisen to the aid of this despotism. Political economy declares the loan to be the best of investments. The patrimony of future generations has been invested in bonds regulated by the present generation. By successive loans, all individual capital has fallen into the hands of the state. In a more or less indirect way, the state has taken possession of all the charitable or other funds created by associations or individuals. Confiscations are not nominally practised, but by the ingenuity of our fiscal system, and the skilful apportionment of the taxes, the whole value of the soil passes into the fiscal treasury in forty years. This is really a kind of confiscation. Cæsarism found out how to transform the Chamber of Deputies into a fiscal instrument. Instead of moderating, limiting, or abolishing the taxes, the Chamber of Deputies, and especially our recent legislative corps, have studied how to increase them. All the representatives of the people have looked upon their constituents as subjects to be taxed and made use of. The government has had more income from the taxes than it wanted. This work of communism has been applauded in a thousand revolutionary papers. In this respect, the republican assemblies have not differed from the imperial. Whether the deputies were chosen by the ballot, by the nomination of Parisian committees, or the appointment of the Minister of the Interior, the state of the case and the result have been the same.The organization of our army is entirely Cæsarean. Though levied from the whole country, it takes cognizance of nothing that is local or provincial. Individual measures are repressed by the bureaucracy, which is subservient to Cæsar because it is detached from the soil, and is influenced only by the hope of promotion.But the French magistracy at least enjoys independence? It did previous to 1789. The government did not interpose in the appointment of magistrates. This system, otherwise very defective, did not err through servility. The empire, artfully retaining a certain semblance of the ancientrégime, was careful not to do so where the independence of the magistracy was concerned. The emperor nominated all the magistrates, and made them removable at pleasure. This system did not suit the Restoration, and immovability was established. Under Louis Philippe, the magistracy rapidly diminished. The more honest felt themselves bound by their oath, and refused to serve the royalty of July. But the Third Empire, by its administrative practices, effaced the last trace of judiciary independence, and destroyed the permanence of the office by the prospect of lucrative advancement. Hitherto money had not seemed to be the aim of the magistrate. The idea of a career to pursue never entered his head. The magistrate did not have to earn his livelihood, and he belonged to his native place,where, regarded with universal respect, he lived on his own fortune, which was the exterior pledge of his independence. The needy and the ambitious did not seek such a post. The empire raised the salaries of the magistrates only to make the office accessible to that class of people who are ready to obey at whatever cost. Immovability was illusory when the greater part of the magistrates, desirous only of advancement, went from one place to another according to the ministerial humor. Besides, the government asked nothing better than to have in each locality transient magistrates who were strangers to the people, and only awaited an opportunity of ascending the ladder of promotion. This allurement was more efficacious than fear in effecting the change in our judiciary customs. The justiceship of the peace, which ought to be a kind of rural and local institution, and which for some time preserved that character, speedily degenerated. The empire at last ended by bringing it completely under the yoke of centralism. Instead of being the independent arbiter of petty quarrels and trivial interests that required immediate solution because they were not worth the expense and delay of a suit, the justice of the peace now found himself an electoral agent, and implicated in politics. He had to be chosen from the nomadic class of civilians. To prevent all ties with the people, fees were done away with, and his salary made equal to that of the judges of the inferior court. The pretext was made that the dignity of the magistracy did not allow a judge to receive perquisites. The truth is that there was a very different reason. The justices of the peace, being natives of the country, and already in possession of a patrimony, had no eye to the fees. Many of them had scarcely any. On an average, the perquisites did not amount to more than five or six hundred francs, and were not always easily collected. A mere income of seven or eight hundred francs was not sufficient to attract a stranger, especially when there was no prospect of promotion. The empire sought to bind the justices of the peace closely to itself, and deprived the office, practically speaking, of its perpetuity, for the same reason that it had made the assize judges removable. The justiceship of the peace, having been made a round of the judiciary ladder, became accessible to those civilians or agents who only asked to serve the government. Our judiciary army, as numerous as our administrative army, and composed of agents nominated directly by the state, had, then, but one course open to it. Its apparent immovability no longer hid anything. Those who are familiar with the affairs of the empire know what to think of a magistracy which takes it upon itself to sound its own praises. Though founded on very different principles, the French magistracy, by a sudden deviation, has gone back to the Cæsarean type of Byzantium.This mixture of the appearance of freedom with despotism is natural to an absolute power resting on a popular basis. We cannot see how it could be otherwise. Ancient Rome afforded the same spectacle. The Cæsars never ceased to repeat that they were the representatives of the people, and the defenders of national liberty. We are not astonished that the French government which sprang from the Revolution has assumed this attitude. The Romans only admitted Roman civilization, which they called “Roman peace.” Their poets often speak of “the majesty of Roman peace.” Civilization, then, consisted in obeying the proconsuls,paying the taxes, furnishing recruits, and working on the roads and public monuments. At this price, the provinces enjoyed a little tranquillity. It is noteworthy that the French Revolution assumed to be the only light capable of guiding the world in the way of liberty, equality, fraternity, progress, civilization, comfort, etc. Its disciples still assert that France is continuing to fulfil this mission. This is what Louis Napoleon meant when he said that France alone contended for an idea. This immeasurable pride in thinking ourselves superior to other nations has had to bow down. It was not by virtue of our actual qualities that we undertook to assume such a supremacy, but, on the contrary, by virtue of the errors and vices that have sprung up in modern times. In the XVIIth century, when our moral superiority was acknowledged and incontestable, no Frenchman ever advertised any pretension to overrule other nations, or believed that our nation was destined to precede others in order to enlighten them. This pretension sprang up in 1789, at the time when a new system was promulgated in the midst of the terrors of the Revolution. Supposing this idea to be new, what right had France to impose it forcibly on other nations? Europe rose in arms to repel revolutionary or Cæsarean invasions, and before the coalition France has three times fallen.We have been sobered by this experience. Therôle, brilliant as it was, has only left us bitter remembrances. It remains for us to govern ourselves without any pretension to govern others. Our political and military organization has suddenly crumbled to pieces. That masterpiece, which was a combination of contradictions, order, and disorder, is now only a ruin. Lamentations are heard on all sides. It is perceived that, under the pretext of equality, all Frenchmen have been reduced to equal powerlessness. When men of good-will sprang up on every hand to the help of France, leaders were wanting; there was no one to direct. Overwhelmed in the first place by number, we ended by overcoming that difficulty, and then there was a deficiency of organization. Leaders and discipline are not the work of a day. If education has not developed individual ability, in vain will you seek for genuine, natural, and acknowledged leaders. The spirit of the family alone, by forming the character, habituates men to a necessary subordination. The atheism of the state tends to root out of every conscience the sense of duty. How obey, if we do not comprehend the obligation of obedience, and if those who rule over us do not seem worthy of ruling us? Discipline is a certain moral order. It should first exist within us by submission to Providence and to the social order established by Providence. Imperial and republican despotism have aimed at moulding the whole French nation after one single type. And when the overruling, guiding will was gone, the whole nation was paralyzed. The Roman Empire had the same fate. It fell both in the east and west from causes analogous to those that are preying on us. An able despotism, a vast material organization, admirable military traditions, and the assent of the people, could not ensure the stability of the brilliant communities of Rome and Byzantium. The same principles must lead to the same consequences: no stable form of government; the supreme power constantly at the mercy of elections, factions, and violence. The Cæsarean system, whenever it obtainssway, gives glory, and grandeur, and brilliancy to society, but also leads to anarchy and incurable weakness.Roman civilization was overthrown by pastoral nations: in the East, by the Arabs and Turks; in the West, by the Germans. Cæsarean France easily obtained the ascendancy over Italy, Austria, and Spain, because, already initiated into Cæsarism by Roman law, they offered but slight resistance. But when it undertook a struggle with Germany, its fortune changed, because that country has many strong elements opposed to Cæsarism and the principles of the French Revolution. Itsesprit de famille, its tendency to decentralization, and its official morality, superior to ours, are among the differences that carry us back to the invasions of the first four centuries. Cæsarean France has played a great part against modern Germany. But France is not so thoroughly Cæsarean as the Roman Empire. Its interests, its customs, and its traditions, impregnated with Catholicism, resist this assimilation. The Italian astuteness of the Bonapartes succeeded in making us think despotism would lead to liberty. Our eyes are painfully opened to the imperialrégimeand modern institutions. We can no longer deny that our social condition has approximated to ancient Cæsarism, and reproduced its principal conditions. The empire did not even conceal this imitation. The public works and the plebiscitum were the popular side of thisrégime. No nation of Europe has experienced anything comparable to it. In no other has the government become the contractor and general constructor of all the public works.The Roman Empire alone presents a similar spectacle. The emperors provided for the amusement of the Roman people. They instituted festivals and games. They everywhere erected buildings for ornament or public utility, the ruins of which are still famous. The great monuments of our ancient monarchies were due to individuals, guilds, and the zeal of the faithful. The state did not interpose. Since 1789, the state alone has erected edifices because it alone has had wealth. This system of public works is only one form of communism. Though Louis Napoleon had no taste for the arts, he had a passion for building. This phlegmatic Cæsar, like the Roman emperors, made it a duty to amuse the people. Family gatherings and the old festivals authorized by religion did not meet with his approval. Such festivals are, from their very nature, anti-Cæsarean. They recall principles and sentiments opposed to Cæsarism. But the individual must not escape Cæsar. Public amusements have a certain influence of their own. They must divert the mind from all the influences of family, corporations, and religion, and partake of the vulgar communism authorized by the state. It is thus Cæsar undertook to amuse the people. Who does not know what the Paris theatres became? The towns in the provinces followed the movement, constrained by thepréfetsand mayors. Corruption, promoted by books and official addresses, was put in practice in every theatre of the empire. When the immense bazaar of the Universal Exposition was opened, Louis Napoleon invited all the sovereigns of Europe to be present. They had no wish to attend, but yielded to his importunities. They held a grudge against their Amphitryon. That was not the only mark of superiority he affected with respect to them. He proposed a congress to sanction the principles of the French Revolution. He neglectedno opportunity of influencing their policy. He was constantly shaking the thrones of Europe by his democratic pretensions. He believed himself alone to be legitimate, and pitied the other sovereigns who lacked the consecration of universal suffrage. Experience has once more shown us that immense powers may rest on fragile foundations, but the lesson will be of no use to the Bonapartes, who are ready to recommence. Shall it be lost on France?Our revolutions and variouscoups d’étatwithin a century have transformed us into a Cæsarean nation. All our political elements bear the impress of this fatal destiny. The army, the magistracy, the administration, and the schools are disciplining us for this social system. There is no power but the state. Property is no longer managed according to the wishes of the proprietor, but by those of the legislator. Luxury has increased to an astonishing degree. How easily it has pervaded all classes of society! It is the government that has led us to yield to these new requirements of fashion. Economically speaking, luxury is waste of capital, and an unproductive expenditure. Old French society, founded on the right of property and the permanence of families and fortunes, rejected luxuries, superfluities, and useless expense. In everything, it had an eye to the solid and durable. That, in fact, was the character of French industry. The Roman Empire was a stranger to lasting influences and hereditary fortunes. Proscriptions and confiscations made short work of them. Nothing must appear to rival Cæsar, and manifest any power or independence. Christian society pursued and attained a different object. With us, the civil code takes the place of confiscations and proscriptions; it takes care that fortunes are as speedily wasted as acquired; it ruins by periodical liquidations families scarcely formed. In spite of this, the instincts of nature incline us to a certain care of our property. Speedily acquired fortunes, made by commerce, industrial pursuits, or legal transmission, became a source of anxiety to the imperial mind. They might foster independence! Thence the constant preoccupation of the empire to lead the whole nation into luxurious habits by the temptation of pleasures and large salaries. The multiplication of cabarets is an unmistakable evidence of this. Obliged to expend more than they gained, the office-holders remained in servitude. And from one to another the emulation has extended throughout France. Cæsar not only amused the people, but, led away by example, the people sought additional amusements at their own expense. Thus property, idly spent, and lacking the permanence that assures independence, ceased to limit or be an obstacle to Cæsar’s will. All wealth became dependent on the public credit and the stock market, and had an interest in the continuance of Cæsar’s reign. The whole interior policy of the empire was based on this principle. The political institution of luxury kept pace with the theatre and literature.The immorality of Cæsarism may be readily understood. Morality in a nation is solely engendered by domestic life. But the family is thebête noireof Cæsarism. It was by destroying it and assuming its functions that Cæsarism succeeded in training the people. A man, separated from his family and the place where he ought to live, and transported to another region where he is only accountable to the state, a stranger to the people among whom he lives, no longer thinks about hismorality, but the service he must render to the state. How many functionaries, inadmissible in one place on account of tricks frowned upon by public opinion, are sent elsewhere without losing the favor of the government!France was as surprised by the invasion as the old world by the deluge. Let us admire her patience and courage. We must remember, however, that it was not Cæsarism that saved her. The official world had disappeared. What remained rather clogged than aided the movement for repairing our disaster. Our deliverance sprang from the people not enrolled under the official banner. Without a government, France has shown her spirit of unity, and revealed her moral and material resources. It was not only the emperor, but the whole empire, that surrendered its sword to the King of Prussia at Sedan. In the same way, Napoleon surrendered to England after Waterloo. The high functionaries that only existed by the will or caprice of Cæsar, and who only served him by giving up all responsibility, were suddenly left in darkness. The emperor only soughtex officiosupporters. In a country like France, these are always to be found. Messrs. Morny, Billault, Troplong, Rouher, and Ollivier had pliancy of mind enough to say and do anything to palliate and excuse everything. Thus, without any counterpoise, the imperial government consisted in a single will which was intermittent, fluctuating, and a perpetual source of troubles and catastrophes to France. History is not a casualty. It has its laws which control events. It is well to repel invasions; it is better to do away with their cause. Demosthenes replied to the Athenians who sought news of Philip: “Why, of what consequence is it? Should he have perished, you would create another by your dissensions. The Macedonian domination is only the result of Greek anarchy.”The French Empire, like the Roman, is the creation of historic necessities produced by an age of revolutions and the application of principles that only find complete development under an autocratic form. Anarchy, in a proud and powerful nation with a glorious past and a warlike spirit, will always end in military supremacy. Christianity alone was able to check the system of perpetual war kept up by paganism. It framed the law of nations, making them a Christian republic. By the Revolution of 1789, France abandoned this system. The Restoration of 1814 re-established it in part, but in 1830 the European treaties were broken. Europe had to be on its guard against us, and exclude us from its alliances. Louis Napoleon openly and officially expressed his contempt for treaties. With him France took refuge in proud isolation, affecting an intellectual dictatorship, the prelude of wars. War alone, in fact, can impose the will of one nation on another. This reign of armed propagandism has not ceased its manifestations since 1848. The public schools, all the academies, and the entire press came to the aid of Bonapartism. The personal enemies of the emperor were his most active auxiliaries. He was well aware of this. He carefully promoted Carbonarism in Italy, and Jacobinism in France—two terms for expressing the same thing. The attempts against his life only promoted his success, instead of being an obstacle to it. He recognized, so to speak, their justice, for he had taken the oaths of Carbonarism. When he realized that a crisis was at hand, he was not willing for France to escape the Revolution,the reins of which he held with apparent moderation. He successively let loose the press, the clubs, the secret societies, and even the mob. He weakened and degraded authority in the person of his agents, assured the pardon of all political offences, frequently changed his ministers without any reason or pretext, that the people might be convinced that they were all puppets. In this way, and under the pressure of invasion, he seemed preparing for a movement analogous to that of 1792. His death then would have thrown us into a state of anarchy which would probably have brought on the same invasion we have just undergone. He left behind him only reflections of himself. When he disappeared from the scene, all this was effaced. The regency of Eugénie amounted to about as much as the regency of Maria Louisa—vain imitation, and a manifest proof that, apart from the imperial person, there was no imperial government or recognized authority, and that the empire and anarchy were brother and sister.The downfall of the French monarchy plunged France once more into a state of paganism. Our wars and invasions have been of the same character as the wars and invasions of the first centuries of our era. The French Empire had an insatiable thirst to invade Europe. Germany, on her side, has retained a power of expansion that recalls ancient times. She no longer emigratesen masse, but by the indirect ways of modern civilization. She first sends her pioneers. Her tillers of the soil go to the Sclave provinces of Austria and the Russian coasts of the Baltic. By their aptitude for labor, they take the lead, amass capital, and end by controlling the people that receive them. There is a German party in Russia, and this party has a controlling influence over the czars, or Muscovite Cæsars. The Sclave race, more impressible, more poetic, and less tenacious, less laborious, feels set aside by the new settlers. It realizes that it is the victim of its hospitable and beneficent nature. A reaction will soon take place. The czar will be forced to take the national cause in hand. Russia has not uttered its last word. She has been in some sort under foreign influence since she imbibed the corrupt Christianity of Byzantium. It was only under the direction of the French philosophers of the XVIIIth century that she finally became a part of the European world. After the wars of the Revolution and the empire, our influence greatly diminished, and yielded to German influence. Destitute of scientific or literary traditions, Russia sent her young men intended for office to the German universities. They returned with the scientific jargon of the schools, a strong dose of atheism, affiliated with the secret societies, and without any sympathy with the tastes and sentiments of the Sclave race. Thus favored, German influence has increased to such a degree as to cause anxiety in the Russian Empire. In its encroachments on Austria, Germany did not begin with pacific conquests. Silesia, seized by Frederic II., was colonized gradually. Finally, German emigration filled our banks, our counting-rooms, and our railway offices. This tendency to expansion could only be restrained or repressed by our alliance with a great nation. Unfortunately, France affected to be above European law. She pretended to promulgate a new law, a new civilization. She refused, in the name of the principles of 1789, to allow that there were any legitimate sovereigns in Europe. France, plunged intoCæsarism, found a rival in Germany, which had more ancient Cæsarean traditions, and which, less ravaged by revolution, was better organized than we for attack and defence. It is still increasing in population, whereas France, under the rule of economists, diminishes every day. This alone ought to warn French policy of the error into which it has fallen. The German Confederation, the imposing remains of Christian ages, was the safeguard of Europe, by maintaining a peaceful equilibrium in Germany. France and England, unwisely governed, allowed the German Confederation to be dismembered. The Germanic union under Prussia was evidently threatening. Lord Palmerston and Louis Napoleon, statesmen who had no correct notions of Christianity, could not see anything or comprehend anything. It was, however, evident that a peculiar kind of Cæsarism was to spring from this overturning of Germany. A slight knowledge of history and the German character should have been sufficient to convince Europe of this. The diplomacy which, by the treaty of 1856, arraigned the Sovereign Pontiff at its bar, rejoiced at the destruction of the Germanic Confederation, without dreaming that a few years later the Empire of Germany would consign the once powerful nations of England, France, and Russia to the second rank. At the moment of this change, it is not useless to remark how many deadly struggles the Papacy has had with Cæsarism. It was by the diffusion of Christian principles that it laid the foundation of Christian society.The political life of the Papacy has been wholly spent in combating Cæsarism. It struggled against the Roman emperors for three centuries, and then against the heresies of Byzantium. In our age, Napoleon exhausted all his arts and violence on Pius VII. Pius IX. found himself at issue with Louis Napoleon, and Victor Emanuel, the Italian representative of Cæsarism. The contest of the popes with the emperors of Germany is celebrated. It was the Papacy that preserved human liberty throughout the middle ages. Germany had seized the imperial sceptre that had fallen from the hands of the weak successors of Charlemagne. In the XIIIth century, the Cæsarean rule threatened the whole of Europe. Frederic II., more perverse and more able than his namesake of the XVIIIth century, found himself the master of Germany. He triumphed in Italy through the support of the legists, and extended his claims to the rest of Europe. Innocent IV., by issuing the bull of excommunication against Frederic II. at the Council of Lyons, stopped the German Cæsar in his career, and put an end to the invasions of Italy he was constantly making. Italy, under the auspices of the Papacy, displayed a long career of municipal liberty.The development of Cæsarism in France as well as in Germany has followed the overthrow of the temporal power of the Holy See. But the German Empire will always retain an immense superiority over the French Empire. It is less revolutionary, less democratic, less at variance with its past history. It is not impossible that it may combine with the local and municipal institutions of the country. Prussia is far from our absolute centralization, and there is nothing to indicate that she is to be subjected to it. She remains the ally of the great powers of the Continent. She could easily have rallied all Europe against imperial and Byzantine France. Let us not deny it: no victory of Louis Napoleon’s could have secured the left bank ofthe Rhine. The German coalition would very soon have drawn the rest of Europe after it. This struggle of one against all is a necessity of Bonapartism. Nothing can check it. Softness of manners, a refined civilization, pretended condemnation of war, philanthropy bordering on religion, boundless industry and credit, the military incapacity of Louis Napoleon, nor anything else, could have prevented the war from breaking out. “Revolution is war and bankruptcy,” said Royer-Collard. It obeys its nature. It upheld the Bonapartes in spite of a kind of material order and discipline they forced on the people; it required of them an armed propaganda which they were more capable of managing successfully than the republic itself. Louis Napoleon, with his mildness of character, and talent as a writer, desired a peace that would enable him to continue his utopian experiments in journalism. But he was not his own master. He felt that a revolution at home constituted only one-half of his obligations; the other half—revolution abroad—he was also determined to effect, though to his regret. He regarded the bombs of Orsini as a salutary warning, and submitted to his destiny. He extended revolution to Italy and Mexico. He destroyed the influence of Austria. Prussia profited by these disturbances to unite Germany. But Louis Napoleon made a pitiful failure. He dashed against a wall with his eyes shut. The pretext of a Hohenzollern on the Spanish throne was ridiculous, and the legislative corps and senate that countenanced it showed the measure of their political knowledge and independence.It is difficult to comprehend by virtue of what principle or interest he opposed the choice of a Hohenzollern. Had he not rejected the hereditary principle? Had he not aided in overthrowing all the princes of the House of Bourbon who still reigned through this principle? Was not his own power based on election? And what did it matter to France whether that pitiful Spanish crown was on one head rather than another? What gratitude could he expect from those revolutionary sovereigns whose patron or director he constituted himself? He took the petty Subalpine king by the hand, and led him to the Crimea, and to the Congress of Paris, and thence into all the capitals of Italy. His plans were unveiled when he forced the unhappy Victor Emanuel to give his daughter to the imperial cousin. Who then could cherish any illusion as to the result? It was unfolded. Did the revolutionary union of the south spring from it? This union could only be effected by the unity of despotism. Napoleon knew it: his nephew forgot it. Revolutionary nations are necessarily at war or distrustful of one another, as the revolutionary factions of a nation are always contending, unless some master—no matter whether it is an individual or a party—succeeds in suppressing the rivalry.This was the state of the case in our Revolution. Is it not a matter of public notoriety that the name of Napoleon excites only horror and disgust in Spain and Italy?Louis Napoleon’s aim was not to subdue Europe by war, but to effect an internal change of government by means of revolutionary principles. This resulted in exciting all the great powers against him. He thought there would be a revolution in Russia in consequence of the emancipation of the serfs which he recommended to the Czar Alexander. He overthrew the German Confederationthough it was so powerful a guarantee for the safety of France. It was he who made William Emperor of Germany. The overthrow of the Confederation under the circumstances in which it took place necessarily led to the empire, as the overthrow of ancient France led to the imperialrégimethat has lasted till now. We need not be astonished at the efforts of the King of Prussia to re-establish Louis Napoleon. They were accomplices, though Louis Napoleon has been taken for the dupe. Not that he was not conscious of the situation, but he warded off the flashes of reason and common sense he had, and gave himself up to a hallucination. France imitated him, with the conscript fathers of the senate and the legislative corps at its head. Louis Napoleon contended for an idea, and he triumphed after his manner, after the manner of his uncle. Conquered and made prisoner, he was humiliated, not by defeat, which does not humiliate the brave, but by accepting his defeat. He yielded to the conqueror, he surrendered his sword. Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo, but he was not really cast down till he found himself on board theBellérophon. Then he realized who was victor. The lamentations of St. Helena reveal the liberal despot. Louis Napoleon also became an author and a journalist. He dreamed of returning to France. He published at Cassel under the name of his friend, M. de Grécourt, abrochuredesigned to influence Germany in his favor. He had no doubt of being as warmly welcomed by France as Napoleon was when he returned from the island of Elba.There was no change in France. Our social institutions were still standing. The republicans had found nothing to modify in the wonderful machinery of despotism. There was nothing to prevent him from resuming his place. There was the invasion besides. Did the disasters of 1814 prevent Napoleon’s reascendancy in France in 1815? Was there any lack of senators and representatives to welcome Cæsar? Was not the popularity of the uncle the foundation of the nephew’s success? That was the sole cause of Louis Napoleon’s accession. This popularity was nothing more than the result of success. Power and success united and counted the votes, and proclaimed the result. The revolutionary power was not entirely destroyed by the events of 1814 and 1815; it became an organized system, having its regulations, its leaders, its journals, its secret societies, and its permanent committees variously disguised under the forms of beneficence, pleasure, science, etc. No regular government at variance with this many-sided, intangible power could be established. The regular government of France especially—the hereditary monarchy—could not take root again. Public opinion and enthusiasm are like stage machinery that rises and falls. We witnessed the workings of this machinery from 1848 to 1852. The inventors did not even give themselves the trouble to hide the workings from the eyes of the public. This reign of opinion has continued. The word of command from the emperor was echoed by the ministers, and from them by thepréfets,sous-préfets, and mayors. The entire administration in all its gradations walked in the same footsteps. By the public works, loans, and illusory promises, the mass of electors were so fascinated that they could refuse nothing to a government that was promoting such benefits. Universal suffrage is the character in the comedy—the simple, good-natured Demos of Aristophanes. Inreality, it is the emperor—he who has theimperium, individually or by a number of individuals, who votes at the general election. In the Cæsarean system, the emperor alone acts, but he acts in the name of the people, and as the representative of the people. He is the voice of the people. This must not be lost sight of when we judge the acts of Louis Napoleon.In hisbrochure, he claims the good-will of the King of Prussia and Germany, because it was France alone that desired the war. He did not desire it; he was not responsible for it. This was pleading his own imbecility and the culpability of France. What! he did not set France against Germany? He did not break the treaties of 1815, or officially condemn them? He did not constantly propose the policy of his uncle as an example to France? He followed it without condemning an act or a principle. The Jacobinism of his later years was a mere imitation of the liberal ideas his uncle brought back from the island of Elba, and continued to cultivate at St. Helena—ideas that M. Thiers, in his voluminous compilation concerning the empire, regarded as serious! This was why Louis Napoleon declared him “the national historian,” and presided at the obsequies of Béranger, “the national poet.” This Bonapartism in verse and prose had only one practical aim—the conquest of the Rhine provinces. That was the favorite topic of old soldiers and the zealous members of the imperialentourage. People of more sense, who were not overscrupulous, resigned themselves to it as a necessity of the situation. Ever since 1852, it had been thought there would be a sudden blow aimed at Belgium or Germany. Was not Austria attacked in 1859 without any reason or pretext, and, it may be said, without a declaration of war, and in violation of all the laws of nations? When and where did universal suffrage countenance this? Where was it discussed by the ten million voters? What authority did they give their representatives? The imperialists and liberals have refused the electors the right which they enjoyed in 1789 to give directions to those they elected. The member represents, then, only himself, though individually he may have been acceptable to his constituents at the time of the election. The elector is not free in his vote, because he does not know his so-called deputy. And these representatives of Cæsarism have never been free. No sooner are they nominated, than they forget their orders and electors, and only aim at “the glory of obedience” to Cæsar, like the senators of Tiberius.Louis Napoleon played to perfection the game of Cæsarism. Conqueror or conquered, he always kept a foothold. Victory immortalized him, and assured perhaps his son’s future career. And defeat was not to be imputed to him. As the representative of the people, he was only a passive agent. A docile instrument of the passions and sentiments of the people, he sacrificed himself. Did not this entitle him to the gratitude of his fellow-citizens? He regarded the republic as less popular than himself, and condemned by universal suffrage. Besides, he affected to personify in a supreme degree the republican element. It was not with respect to France he was anxious. He knew that the Cæsarean constitution of France left a sure way always open of regaining the throne. It was by foreigners he was overthrown. He preferred this fall to the necessity of presiding over new disasters. Hewas not sorry, either, to see the city of Paris, which of late had been constantly opposed to the empire, and whose enmity daily increased under its liberal laws, chastised by Prussia. King William thus effected acoup d’étatwhich did not injure the emperor, and made a return to despotism easier than at the beginning of the empire.La Situation, the Bonaparte organ at London, insinuated that Prussia had an interest in allying itself with Louis Napoleon, in order to reconstruct the map of Europe. And it did not conceal that the neutral countries, Belgium and Holland, were to pay for this reconciliation. In this way, Bonapartism, though apparently crushed, showed signs of life, and fostered its hopes. This was a sign it was not morally subdued. It was overcome only to be restored. But the French republic was not in a condition to restore it, because it confounded itself with it. It must be ascertained if Europe feared Bonapartism or France. Bonapartism aside, France is now a really peaceful, honest, Christian nation. She has only been formidable since 1789 through the principles of dissolution she has carried within herself and diffused abroad by means of newspapers, secret societies, and armies.The idea of giving Holland to Prussia, and Belgium to France, was worthy of Louis Napoleon. Would Europe allow it? Prussia already preponderates. France would gain nothing. She could not rise from the inferiority into which she has fallen through late events. The humiliation that Cæsarism has inflicted on our country is not a thing of yesterday. Napoleon stated the problem clearly: France must subject Europe to revolution, or disappear before a torrent of invasions. These two alternatives have been successively more or less realized. The Restoration gave peace once more to France and to Europe. France, regaining her rank, menaced no one, and sustained herself by her alliances. She fell again in the Revolution of 1830. Foreign sympathy was withdrawn from us. All the alliances were broken off. The various governments, stunned by the rebound of the Revolution, stood on their guard. The monarchy of July sought to favor revolution moderately abroad, and to direct it with skill at home. From that time, Europe formed a coalition against us. During the first ten years of the Revolution of July, the public mind was disturbed as to the possibility of a great war with Germany. The liberal party used every effort to bring it on, without any reason certainly, in order to fulfil one of the conditions of the revolutionary programme, which is an armed propaganda. It was with such views that the fortifications of Paris were conceived by M. Thiers. The equilibrium of Europe was destroyed, therefore, to our sole injury. The empire developed the seeds of revolution sown by the government of July. France descended lower than in 1830; she even lost all regard to decency, by giving herself up to the revolutionary current. The distinguished men of talent who devoted themselves to the service of Louis Philippe withdrew from the scene, and were replaced by a crowed of nobodies. Assemblies, ministers, and emperor entered on such a contradictory course that one might believe our country had fallen into its dotage.The Mexican war made America aware of our political weakness; and, in the East, our diplomacy lost the last remnant of its influence by taking a stand apart from Catholicism.The war of 1859 set Italy against us—a country so lately governed by princes favorable to France. The Italian unity and German unity consigned France to a secondary rank. Finally, the commercial treaties have made us subservient to England. Thus, in renouncing all idea of conquest, Louis Napoleon did not give up disturbing Europe. France served as the instrument of this work, and ended by being the victim. The material disproportion of forces could only produce a catastrophe. Europe was arming its men, while France, under Louis Napoleon’s direction, was plunged in revolutionary metaphysics. It does not require any great sagacity, however, to perceive that a revolutionary nation could not be in a condition to sustain a conflict with a nation that has remained true to conservative principles. What could be effected by combining all these shattered elements? How could we depend on these bruised reeds?So rapid a decadence under the influence of anti-social principles has permitted neighboring nations to renounce the traditions that bound them to us. The admiration they felt for the superiority of our civilization yielded to the fear of falling under a despotism as unprincipled as it was senseless. It was from the hotbed of Bonapartism, the inheritor of revolutionary traditions, that have sprung the various revolutions which from 1814 to 1830 ensanguined all Europe. The republic of 1848, exhausted in the course of ten months, consigned its stock of revolutionism to Louis Bonaparte. He made it yield with usury. Until 1859, he hesitated and felt his way, being fettered by public sentiment, which was more conservative and Christian than he could have wished. He skilfully got rid of the honest people around him, and, once started, he never stopped again. From that fatal period, he was no longer his own master: he was the ready tool of the Revolution. It is surprising that the Bonapartes are not satisfied with reigning over France; they think they have a right to all Europe—a right to substitute the sovereignty of the people and elective governments for all the hereditary monarchies. The mission they claim secures the complicity of all the malcontents. The rulers assuredly take note of all this danger. They understand that their enemy in France is not France itself, but the Revolution.The German Empire rekindles the fears that Louis XIV. inspired and Napoleon made us realize. Owing to a remnant of feudalism, it is founded on a much more solid basis than the French Empire was. When it attains its utmost limit, there will really be only one power in Europe. Even now, no one would think of denying its preponderance. The balance of power can only be preserved by the alliance of the secondary powers—France, Russia, Austria, and England. No one disputes the superiority of Prussia. In order to attain it, it would have been sufficient to be preserved during the half-century just elapsed from the revolutions that have so lowered France and Austria. Prussian statesmen labored energetically to unite Germany. By directing the mental training in the universities, the secret societies, the press, and the diplomacy, they have shown a system and energy that in France would have enabled statesmen of another stamp to bewilder and crush the genius of France, and bring our nation down to the dust. The Napoleonic Empire was one vast treason. It only allured France in order to deliver it up to foreigners. By givingher the choice between universal rule and annihilation, he placed her in an absurd position, and subjected her to certain ruin for the greater glory of Napoleon. It may here be remarked that no man ever made a more lavish use than Napoleon of the word “glory,” which the pagans so constantly had on their lips. It was comprehensible to people that lived to serve masters who, having all that could gratify pride and power in this world, aspired to glory as the supreme recompense. It was under similar circumstances that Napoleon and his nephew sought and obtained glory. Their names are imperishable. They are connected with catastrophes human memory will forever retain. They refused to reign peaceably by fulfilling their duties as sovereigns. Rejecting a divine authority, and recognizing no higher power, they made use of the people as the instrument of their passions. One had a passion for conquering Europe, the other for revolutionizing it. And France had to promote these designs, be drained of men under the First Empire, and be revolutionized under the Second, in order that the revolutionary contagion might be spread throughout Europe. War, coming to the aid of this work, led to the third invasion—the crowning achievement of the Third Empire.The sole prejudice the French manifest in favor of the empire is that it maintained the honor of our army, and restored order. This is only true with respect to the Revolution. For the Revolution was absolute disorder. And the aim of the empire was not to substitute order for revolution, but to organize the Revolution by making it possible to the vulgar mind. It proved, therefore, wholly incompetent to the work of reorganizing society. Napoleon succeeded republican anarchy, and would have left us in it at his downfall, had it not been for the House of Bourbon, which saved us from foreigners and revolution. The nephew likewise succeeded his mother, the republic, whose death he hastened. And everybody knows that his natural death at the Tuileries would have been followed by a triumphant republican rising at Paris. He made every preparation for that. The republic of the 4th of September, 1870, was established almost as a matter of course, without violence, without noise. Therégentehad orders not to oppose anything. General Montauban declared to all who would listen to him that he should only offer moral resistance to the expected demonstration of the 4th of September. In fact, after Wissembourg, there was no imperial government. That government, then, was anarchical in essence and administrative by accident. It only rose momentarily above anarchy, and speedily sank into it again. It dreaded nothing more than a peace that would strengthen institutions, create new influences, and diminish Cæsar’s personality. Louis Napoleon was perpetually remodelling the different institutions, and without any apparent object. It was in this way he did away even with the traditions of the First Empire, and subjected the army to so many ridiculous experiences.It doubtless seems singular—to accuse the uncle and the nephew of anarchy, when their putting down anarchy was precisely their title to govern France. But anarchy is not the only feature of the empire: there was despotism besides; and with these original principles there was an ingredient of political order which we do not deny. When this side of things became apparent, the peoplethrew themselves into the emperor’s arms, and hailed him as the saviour of the country. When all was lost, they took hold of the first thing that presented itself. In our modern France, the empire and the Napoleons are the only memories capable of fixing every eye and directing every vote at a given moment. The salvage obtained, half the work remains to be accomplished. In the latter part of its task, the empire always fails. Its principles hinder it; they only favor order under conditions which prevent its solidity. Why this special hatred kept up by the Bonapartes against the House of Bourbon? The Bonapartes have nothing against the Bourbons; our kings had long lost their power when the Bonapartes seized it. There is no personal difference between them and the Bourbons. We must look beyond to find the connection between the cause and effect. The Bourbons and the Bonapartes are above all that is individual and personal. They represent two opposite causes. By the intrigues of Louis Napoleon, the offshoots of the House of Bourbon have disappeared from the thrones of southern Europe. They are a living protestation against revolutions. The Bourbons have in vain allied themselves with the revolutionary party, and ruined their own cause; they never succeeded in gaining the good-will of their adversaries, so effectually have their principles, which they cannot divest themselves of, protected the monarchical cause against themselves! The House of Bourbon, in its downfall at Naples and Madrid, was elevated by its fall. The dethroned Neapolitan king has shown himself more Christian, more kingly, than before he fell. The Spanish monarchy, by the mouth of Don Carlos, has expressed sentiments truly worthy of a king, and contrasts with the attitude of the elective and liberal king who has just left. The House of Bourbon has been purified by the crucible of revolutions, because, in spite of its failings and misfortunes, it represents the principle of right. The Bonapartes remain true to themselves. They do not vary in theirrôleor in their pretensions, and remain attached to principles irreconcilable with the peace of France and all Europe. The recall of the Bourbons is an European necessity. It will be more easily effected when the wall of prejudice, which has barred the way, is wholly broken down. This European war had been foreseen from the beginning of the empire. Louis Napoleon, in throwing the responsibility of it on France, acknowledged that he yielded to the fatality of his position. What could be a more decisive proof, and what other could be wished, that the empire is war? No one in France desired war. Nothing was ready. The liberal party curtailed every year the budget of the army. Prussia gave us no excuse for aggression; all thechancelleriesadvised peace. It was then that, a prey to the evil genius of his family, to obsessions that deprived him of sense and foresight, Louis Napoleon made a sudden attack on Germany, without looking to see if he was followed, or how he was followed.Our fault was in not being ready, say the Bonapartists. That is an illusion. At no price could the empire have been ready. The military organization, weakened by perpetual changes, the corruption and lack of discipline diffused among the soldiers and under-officers by means of the public journals and secret societies, the limited resources available under a system which affecteda kind of communism in the civil order, and constantly encroached on future supplies, rendered reform impossible. Everything set aside the thought of attempting it. The budget paid 400,000 men, and our army did not really exceed 200,000! A reform in France on the Prussian model would have required several years and the overthrow of all our modern institutions. Can we imagine, with the other expenditures of our budget, eight hundred millions more for the army? Prussia has been half a century in achieving its present organization. Germany has its gradation of ranks and classes. A numerous nobility forms the basis of its military institutions, and furnishes, in time of war as well as peace, the natural leaders of the whole nation. And we Frenchmen—we are still under the elective system, which is that of children at their sports. Leaders who are improvised remain necessarily without authority, unless they have been prepared for theirrôleby their previous life. Our military organization corresponds to our social organization: and it is the empire, a militaryrégime, but also a Saint-Simonianrégime, that has co-operated actively in the military dissolution of France. It was by being mixed with Saint-Simonism that it returned to the extreme notions of 1789 and 1793. This socialism that was to sustain the empire against the clergy, the conservative party, and the republicans, did it weigh one ounce in his favor? At the first reverse, all the socialism in authority disappeared. And Louis Napoleon has had no adversaries more implacable than all these socialists whom he fed, and who are making up for their former servility by their present abuse.We must not weary of meditating on these words: France fights for an idea. This idea, under various names, is the Revolution, socialism, and the principles of 1789. Louis Philippe, that emperor on a small scale, and that “best of republics,” pursued the same crooked way. He classed his wars and foreign intrigues under the mild term of “liberalism.” He propagated in his way, by the assistance of the Assemblies, the principles of the Revolution. He gradually but persistently violated the treaties of 1815, which had put an end to twenty-five years of social war in Europe. It was in violation of these treaties that he ascended the throne. He interfered in Belgium in the name of the Revolution; he aided greatly in the downfall of the Bourbons of Spain; he occupied Ancona, in spite of the Holy See, and indicated a course to Gregory XVI. that was identical with the terms of Louis Napoleon’s letter to Edgar Ney. Finally, less Catholic than M. Guizot, he applauded the ruin of the Sonderbund, and refused Prince von Metternich the support of France in protecting the interests of the smaller cantons, our friends and ancient allies. By his inaction, he favored the revolutionary cause when he did not serve it with his forces. The revolutionary triumph at Berne soon extended to Paris, and Louis Philippe had to withdraw more speedily than he came. He propagated revolutionism in Europe during the whole course of his reign, with less display than Louis Napoleon, but with as much perversity. Certainly, neither Prussia, nor Austria, nor Russia were deceived as to the cause and tendency of the Revolution of 1830. They protested in vain. England alone took sides with Louis Philippe: thence the subserviency of our policy to that of England. Louis Philippe made the most of that ally of the Revolution: throughparty spirit, he sacrificed even the interest and honor of France. We recognize there the soldier of 1789, the former usher of the Jacobin club. And Louis Napoleon, for the same cause, humiliated himself more profoundly. He put his ministers, his assemblies, his diplomacy, our commerce, and our industries at the feet of England. And he certainly was not ignorant that England would never send him a shilling or a man. But he knew that England protected revolution on the Continent. He bound her to the revolutionary cause by the Crimean war and the commercial treaty. England powerfully seconded it in Italy and Spain. It was Bonapartism that English policy has developed even while thinking it was making use of it. Coming events will tell whether England has not, by violating her traditions, hastened a decline already evident and even alarming.It is possible that, by rejecting the pretended English alliance, which was never anything but a lure, France would have been forced to closer relations with the Continent, and to conform to the European law of nations, which would have saved Europe from great calamities. The sovereigns, then, have some interest in withdrawing France from English complicity. The Restoration alone understood the practice of French policy, and alone maintained a firm attitude with respect to England. Its whole policy, interior as well as exterior, was national and uninfluenced by England. The conquest of Algiers was the most brilliant result of that policy. The Restoration made successful wars, and wars Europe had no reason to complain of; for they were carried on with the consent of the powers, and to re-establish the law of nations settled by the treaties of 1815. Such was the character of the war with Spain in 1823. Peace reigned then among all the great powers of the Continent, and it was solely to the House of Bourbon it was owing; that house overthrown, a spirit of revolt broke out on all sides, and made thrones totter. What profit did France derive from it? Condemning herself by her institutions to perpetual war, France pronounced her own sentence of death. She conquered under Napoleon only by the ability of her leader, when she found herself contending with one or two nations. She successively defeated each of her enemies. At length her armies were made up of recruits from every country in Europe; she incorporated the vanquished through the same policy as ancient Rome. It was an army composed of soldiers from all parts of Europe that Napoleon led into Russia. The disaster of 1812 freed Germany. Then, for the first time, a serious coalition was arranged, and Napoleon was defeated by the combined forces in 1813, 1814, and 1815. Louis Napoleon attacked Russia and Austria separately. He isolated Prussia from the great powers, but his policy of nationality brought on German unity. And it was the whole of Germany that confronted him when he merely wished to confront the King of Prussia. The King of Prussia, had he been defeated, would have appealed to the Emperor of Austria and the czar, who would not have failed him. Our revolutionary tendencies will always draw a coalition upon us. The late events have weakened the revolutionary party in Europe to such a degree that the support it offered us, and on which we relied, will be of no more avail. Europe, surprised by the outburst of 1789, yielded to our arms for twenty years. She then united, and, imitating the imperial military policy, carriedit to a degree of perfection that left us behind. What remains for France and all Europe but to agree in re-establishing peace by conformity of political principles? And in 1873, as in 1815, this peace depends solely on the recall of the House of Bourbon to France. It is to this work that Europe is invited if she does not wish to perpetuate a revolution which, after ruining France, will not leave one of the great powers standing.The French Revolution has till now been the object of public attention. Princes and people have bestirred themselves for a century to oppose or sustain it. The inability of the principles of 1789 to establish anything, and the invasion of 1870, have opened the eyes of France, and better disposed it to make terms with Europe henceforth. But beside the French Revolution, now growing powerless, rises a political element that suddenly overawes and disturbs European equilibrium. A policy of defence and preservation ought to be directed against the Empire of Germany, not to destroy it, but to guarantee the safety of other governments by a general alliance and a new law of nations. France will never declare war against Europe again. Louis Napoleon is the last to make such a challenge. Personally, there was nothing warlike in him; but he represented a system that tends to war. To him this war was an amusement, a distraction. To divert himself by a general war, in order to escape for a moment from national affairs that perplexed him! The diversion was powerful; as well blow out one’s brains to drive awayennui. The mass of the French people did not participate in the madness of the Bonaparte system: they are victims as well as Europe. Only we have come to that phase of the system which is more particularly humiliating to France. The three great allied powers of the North have nothing more to fear from France. But this alliance of the North is no longer on terms of equality. We say great powers! There is now but one great power—Germany. And she necessarily threatens Austria and Russia by her military strength and by her expansive power, through her hardy and laborious race, that is filling the United States with swarms of colonizers, extending to the neighboring Sclave countries in Russia, and putting forth its shoots even on French soil. German preponderance will pursue its course. It is not universal rule, but a preponderance that will tend to it, unless a union of the secondary powers oppose it with a strong, resisting force. Germany herself will not be wanting in prudence. Her reign will last its time; it is sure of only a short triumph. In twenty-five years, Russia, in consequence of the progress of science and industry, will be able to subjugate Germany. Germany will then have need of France.By a law of Providence, nations that rise from an uncertain beginning seem to attain their height suddenly, and almost as speedily begin to decline. We Frenchmen have had our day of power and glory in the middle ages. The age of Louis XIV. was our era of intellectual superiority and political preponderance. We have come down from that pinnacle; there is no denying it. Germany, by its material strength, is rising far above the point we attained. England, France, Russia, and Austria no longer have any influence, by their diplomacy and alliances, over the hundreds of petty princes and peoples that constituted the German Confederation. They are shut out of Germany. Any pretension to interferencewould make them a laughing-stock. All these powers, Russia excepted, have pursued a foolish policy, and are receiving the recompense due to their shrewdness. Inheritor of Richelieu, the French Revolution so disturbed Germany as to overthrow all its princes. The German nation has survived, and by the concentration of its unity has acquired a power of aggression and conquest it was incapable of under its former organization. The Revolution of 1789 resulted in the immediate elevation of England, which from the third rank rose almost to the first—a rank she would still have, had she not replaced the policy of Pitt and Burke by the policy of Lord Palmerston and his followers. Louis Napoleon created the Empire of Germany, but England applauded his course. All her statesmen have rejoiced in the humiliation of France that has resulted from it. Those debaters and merchants have advocated the establishment of an immense military empire in the heart of Europe, without perceiving that peaceful and industrious England would thereby lose its influence. She is destined to decline still further. Her influence on the Continent depended on the old balance of power, and preponderated through her alliance with Austria. In 1859, she betrayed Austria, and shamefully disavowed the treaties of 1815. Austria turned to Russia, or to Prussia, or to both at once.The old kingdoms, the historic nations, are breaking in pieces. In reality, it is the Prussian Empire that has been founded, rather than the German Empire restored. Germany retains enough of Catholic life to give her a tone of moral and intellectual grandeur that render her superior to Russia and the United States. There is nothing to disturb her but the future, and a future not far distant, if the people of Southern Europe continue to abandon themselves to revolutionary principles. We are far from believing that France can never rise again. She rose after 1815: the same causes produce the same effects. What concerns Europe is that France will never resume herrôleof agitator. Bonapartism is still powerful. It prevails through the habits and necessities which concentrate and direct the whole political, moral, and mental activity of France. This storm over, the name of Napoleon will again disturb the public mind, and unite the suffrage. The republic of 1870 is dragging along in the old beaten track of imperialism. It has merely set up the men of 1848 or 1830—old, worn-out functionaries, whose incapacity has increased rather than diminished. It is time for a reaction against childish prejudices. The motto of the liberal school is: Revolution and Progress! It is well to know that a revolution is, etymologically speaking, a turn back. Our liberals cling to the days of 1789. In a few years, they will be a century behindhand. France rapidly rose from her helplessness of 1815 to the Spanish war of 1823, and the conquest of Algiers. Then a fatal revolution arrested its progress, and it fell back to a state bordering on that of ‘89. Louis Philippe kept us in subjection eighteen years. He was overthrown by the socialism which he restrained, but which with a bound returned to the theories of ‘93 in the name of progress! These sudden relapses disorganize and destroy the social machine. The Restoration alone was successful, because it was the regular government. The House of Bourbon is able to give interior peace to France. It is not the government of a party, for it does not derive its title from the popular vote. It appealsto the conscience and reason like a natural law and a national necessity. It has no other ambition but to make France once more a Christian kingdom by ensuring the general peace of Europe on the basis of a new public law. What great power will dare refuse her its aid, when so strongly interested in the same cause?

FROM THE REVUE DU MONDE CATHOLIQUE.

Theimperial form of government has sprung up in France within seventy years, and been only slightly modified by the different administrations that have succeeded each other. And yet nothing could be more at variance with the traditions, customs, and genius of the nation. Thisrégimeis of foreign origin. It is the recrudescence of the conquest of Gaul by Julius Cæsar. It has subjected us again to a yoke analogous to the condition we were in after Gaul lost its independence. The veil that blinded us to its real nature has fallen off in the shock of momentous events. It is important to reassert a truth that will now be better comprehended. The historians of the Revolution have endeavored to show that the revolutionary movement of 1789 was purely French, and the result of national necessity; but the very violence that accompanied it proves the contrary. Natural developments are effected peacefully. Louis XVI., so far from resisting the torrent, seconded it, and abandoned himself to it. Nothing shows so fully what an effort was necessary for the triumph of the Revolution as the impossibility of its succeeding by regular means and the assent of the country. It took France by assault. It profited by circumstances, but this does not change the nature of its deeds or the character of its success. We do not deny that this pagan and Cæsarean tradition might have found its way into France with the monarchy, but it is certain that, however restrained it had been by Christian principles, it all at once broke through its bounds. Half the members of the Constituent Assembly belonged to the legal profession. Imbued with the absolutist teachings of Roman law, they energetically sought to apply them. The Revolution recalls ancient Greco-Roman days; there is nothing Christian about it. What is the sovereignty of the people but the very principle that laid the foundation of despotism in Greece? The title of “citizen” implies that all Frenchmen belong to the same city or town. This risingen masse, and the notion that every Frenchman is a soldier, are wholly pagan. The legislative corps—that means the people make their own laws, only they do so by proxy. What! the people not exercise their special prerogative! In ancient times, though the people only amounted to a few thousand voters, they never fully enjoyed the legislative power. Besides, in consequence of the institution of slavery, every shade of democracy was equivalent to an aristocracy. The legislators of 1789 only recognized the slavery of citizens with respect to the state, which induced them to create a power strong enough to counterbalance and represent their ten millions of constituents.

Their proscriptions, denunciations, conspiracies, and struggles recall the time of Marius and Sylla. It is worthy of notice that in the revolutionary documents the heroes of Athens and Rome replace the saints of the calendar. This imitation isextremely amusing. A religion utterly pagan follows. A Pantheon is opened to modern divinities, and great men deified. Catholicism undergoes a persecution unsurpassed by the persecutions of the emperors of the first three centuries. It alone is excluded from the Pantheon. Under the empire, this imitation is so striking that it is impossible to mistake it. The Napoleonic era recalls that of the Cæsars. In this new civilization, or ancient civilization revived, new terms are necessary to express the changes made. Political language is modified. First we have consuls, then tribunes, then a senate, and at last an emperor. The senatus-consultum keeps pace with the plebiscitum. The subdued provinces are governed by prefects. The judges are merely Napoleon’s delegates. The whole of this organization is of foreign, not French, origin. Our history presents no parallel to it. And the reality corresponds with the appearances: it is the engrafting of absolute power on the sovereignty of the people. For the emperor never disguised the source of his authority. He always assumed to be the representative of the people. Like Augustus and Tiberius, he derived the imperial inviolability from the tribunitian character with which he was invested. The empire had itsnoblesse, but anoblesseof titles and decorations similar to that of the Lower Empire. All independence was denied thisnoblesse. The army was likewise organized after the manner of the Roman legion. There were no longer any local distinctions. Each regiment was composed of a confused mixture of the various French peoples. The officers even did not belong to their regiments. They knew, in their nomadic life, only the will of Cæsar, on whom alone they depended, and who transported them from one regiment to another, and from one place to another. Passive instruments, they had no will of their own. Therefore, they were ready for anything.

Formerly, the army could not be employed against the nation. It represented the different social elements, and enjoyed the independence natural to these elements. The officers retained their independence, for they served at their own expense from a sense of duty. The administration, the bar, and the army under the empire depended on one individual. Neither local customs, nor municipal corporations, nor right of property could withstand this despotism. A universal levelling under the name of equality smoothed away every obstacle before Cæsar. What rank could stand before the formidable title of the sovereignty of the people? This Cæsarean power found no embodiment in one of French origin. It fell to an Italian, a Roman, to one who rivalled Plutarch’s heroes. This Italian assumed control of the Revolution without ceasing to be Italian, or rather Roman; for Roman he was, a cosmopolite. His aim was to restore the Roman Empire, or the Empire of the West. The French nation was to be the means of universal conquest, as the Gauls in the hands of his predecessors, the Cæsars. Of old France he preserved no vestige. And he carried into Italy his achievements in France. He extended the Revolution to Spain. There was nothing French in a single characteristic of his genius. And his race have obstinately pursued the imperial career which he opened. His nephew, like himself, a mixture of astuteness, violence, boundless ambition, utopianism, literary tastes, and fatalism, renewed the glory of the empire. Louis Napoleon also belonged to all lands. Italian, Swiss, German, English, American—he hadsomething of them all. He spoke all languages as well as the French, and his French was that of a refugee. During his reign, he assembled around him none but foreigners. His apartments were never clear of the outlandish people he had become acquainted with in his wanderings. He loved to converse with them, to tell them his plans. And these adventurers enjoyed being with him. They found him as utopian as ever, as unchanged in his notions, and the phenomenon interested them. No Frenchman of note consented to serve him. France was given up to foreigners. They penetrated everywhere, and took possession of the country. Imperial cosmopolitanism attracted them, and sheltered them, and overloaded them with favors. French policy became English, Italian, American. The denationalization of France was effected by the laws, public schools, new manners, and the transformation of Paris into an European capital of pleasures and the arts: France disappeared. This system was overthrown when, arrived at the highest pitch of madness, Louis Napoleon, after effecting the unity of Italy, so powerfully aided King William in setting up the new Empire of Germany as a rival to France. He sacrificed France to the triumph of the imperial idea in Italy and Germany.

The Bonaparte family is completely destitute of patriotism. Its cosmopolitan character is constantly asserting itself. Louis Napoleon’s foreign policy was essentially anti-French. His constant desire to effect the unity of Italy and that of Germany was the wish of an alien. Our interior legislation became no less opposed to the national character. What is the civil code but the systematization of principles laid down in the Digest? The right of property restricted by the legislator, family rights suppressed for the benefit of Cæsar, and property, as well as individuals, placed under administrative direction—all this is Bonapartism as well as Cæsarism. Outside of the central power, there was no authority possessing any freedom of action in France. No municipal body was safe from dissolution. No corporation was allowed to stand alone. Obedience became the lot of the French; which does not imply order and unanimity, for the government, with contradictory aims, and without any real permanence, imposed laws that were contradictory and impracticable. The distinguishing feature of Bonapartism is the union of liberal theories with absolute power. In spite of universal suffrage and deliberative assemblies, despotism increased and was strengthened. It even relied on the opposing and controlling influences it created. The senate and the legislative corps were subservient to the empire, and sustained it. The idea of equality and liberty constantly held out by high imperial functionaries contributed to the popularity of the Napoleons. Under the laterégime, Prince Jerome Napoleon was charged with representing the democratic side of the imperial government. But we know now, by the revelations of the papers found, that his opinions always coincided with the emperor’s. This was what may be called playing into each other’s hands. The tip of the ear shows itself in those liberal speeches which were apparently most hostile to the government in such a way that no one who knows how to read can fail to perceive it. Under his forcible language is concealed a faint, half-expressed, vague opinion, but which is clearly and positively opposed to the rights of assemblies. What enthusiastic liberalism did notM. de Persigny manifest! According to him, provincial liberty was upheld by thepréfets, whom he styled, on one occasion, the fathers of the departments. This sally caused much laughter, but M. de Persigny did not laugh. This same minister bethought himself of some conflicting elements that had evaded the superintending eye of Cæsar. It occurred to him to place his master officially at the head of the secret societies, and he transformed free-masonry into an imperial institution.

The despotism that has weighed on France for seventy years is unknown to the rest of Europe. We do not say that other nations have not undergone various degrees of despotism, but the despotism of a dictatorship founded on the sovereignty of the people is a privilege France alone has enjoyed. A dictatorship, that institution of republican Rome, has been known here since 1789. Successive governments have been set up in the name of the people; they have all been ephemeral; they have acknowledged no other will but their own—at least, in the beginning. The dictatorship is renewed every ten years. At Rome, before the empire, it has been calculated that every three years and a half a dictatorship was established, which lasted six months or thereabouts. Our situation, therefore, is preferable. It may, however, be questioned if it is the ideal of a Christian nation. Louis Napoleon became the open apologist of Julius Cæsar: he took sides against the Gauls and Franks, who were our ancestors. This audacity excited universal astonishment. The Romans from the beginning were accustomed to absolute power and anarchy. In the vast series of revolutions that make up their history, we find no fixed form of government. The consuls, prætors, and tribunes at Rome, and in the provinces the proconsuls and governors, exercised unlimited power. The emperor was only a perpetual dictator. Roman civilization was absolute power opposed to the liberties of foreign and barbarous nations who preserved a primitive social organization, and lived under patriarchal institutions. The Roman historians acknowledge that the barbarians fought for liberty. The Romans governed the provinces as, at a later period, the Turks governed the countries they conquered. Science and literature have depicted their sanguinary course with brilliant sophistry, and erected it into a system. There is no doubt that the thousands of jurisconsults who devoted their talents to the empire never questioned the legitimacy of Cæsarism. They did not even comprehend German liberty. They often spoke of it with a rare ignorance.

Tacitus sometimes forgets the fidelity with which he has described the manners of the Germans. He passes this singular judgment on a people of Thrace whose independent spirit he mentions:Ne regibus parere nisi ex libidine soliti[169]—they obey their kings only according to their caprice or humor. To us this has no sense. Tacitus sees that these people obey sometimes, but not always. He does not perceive the link that connects these two facts. To obey through humor or caprice is not to obey at all. What is their legal obligation? It is sufficient to examine their barbarous institutions. The barbarous king is neither a dictator nor consul: he is like a father. His authority is limited by other heads of families and by their customs. The tribe obeys, but only after discussing the point in the assemblies of the nation.The people obey when the king has received the necessary approval of the established authorities. There is not, as under the Roman government, a man who rules, and a nation that obeys. This dualism does not exist among the barbarians. The king is a part of the nation, as a father is of his family, which attributes a high dignity to both king and father, but not great power. Unity of action, in this case, comes by the concurrence of wills. This concurrence is permanent, and the easier because nature, through the family ties, softens difference of opinion, lessens rivalries, and produces men of incontestable authority whose very birth commands respect. Their laws are less severe and stringent, but liberty reigns, and society is based on the affections, and not on the mere predominance of force. Tacitus would be more intelligible if he said that the people only obeyed after giving their approval according to forms which custom had established. Strictly speaking, the wordlibidomight imply either consent or assent. The idea is somewhat obscure. But there is nothing to authorize a translator to say the people obeyed their king only through caprice or humor. Tacitus finds it difficult to comprehend the organization of the tribe, and does not regard it as of much account. He judges like a Roman who has a clear notion only of military rule and passive obedience. In spite of himself, however, he dwells on these barbarians, who inspire him with a kind of terror. He points out the effects of their patriarchal institutions from which the liberty of modern nations has sprung. His books are for us a title of honor. Our ancestors figure therein as conquered: their features are changed, but not unrecognizable. We love to find proofs that the traditions of liberty among the French race preceded the importation of despotism.

Despotism came to us by the way of revolution. This will not surprise any one. The empire is the highest and most definite form of despotism among civilized nations. Our enlightenment, or pretended enlightenment, so far from having any repugnance to it, evidently led to it. Are we more enlightened than the Greeks and Romans? Are our rulers better versed in art, law, or literature than the rulers of Athens or Rome? The idea of despotism has been so infused into the modern mind that even the extreme partisans of liberty can conceive of nothing but despotism as the basis of their theories. M. Jules Simon, the worthy successor of M. Duruy, dreams of subjecting France to the communist system of Spartan education. And hardly any one ventures to oppose him. What notions of liberty have children reared by the state? They are brought up in the official world, imbibe its sentiments and the ideas of the state, and reproduce them in their public and private life. We who cannot consent to the suppression of the family are desirous that children should bear the impress of family influences. The family yoke is sweet and light; the assimilation of children to their parents is easy. The liberty of children is guaranteed. Family authority is a less burdensome restraint than that of the state, and the multitude of families creates a sort of counterpoise, so that their minds are not formed by a single will, but develop according to their various aptitudes. If any one objects that the state teaches no doctrines, we reply that to teach none is to teach some. In fact, this is really the source of indifference, or the system of practical atheism. Is not this the doctrine that is agitating France?

Our government has been copied from the Cæsarean government. Everywhere is to be seen a gradation of functionaries who receive their orders from Paris, and are not opposed by any provincial action capable of resisting them. It is useless to enumerate all the public or collective offices in order to show how they are combined under a single impulsion. No country in Europe has attained to such perfection of the imperialrégime. The Roman Empire even has been surpassed, for we have the advantage of the press, railways, and telegraphs, which increase the power of the state to an indefinite degree. New ideas have also arisen to the aid of this despotism. Political economy declares the loan to be the best of investments. The patrimony of future generations has been invested in bonds regulated by the present generation. By successive loans, all individual capital has fallen into the hands of the state. In a more or less indirect way, the state has taken possession of all the charitable or other funds created by associations or individuals. Confiscations are not nominally practised, but by the ingenuity of our fiscal system, and the skilful apportionment of the taxes, the whole value of the soil passes into the fiscal treasury in forty years. This is really a kind of confiscation. Cæsarism found out how to transform the Chamber of Deputies into a fiscal instrument. Instead of moderating, limiting, or abolishing the taxes, the Chamber of Deputies, and especially our recent legislative corps, have studied how to increase them. All the representatives of the people have looked upon their constituents as subjects to be taxed and made use of. The government has had more income from the taxes than it wanted. This work of communism has been applauded in a thousand revolutionary papers. In this respect, the republican assemblies have not differed from the imperial. Whether the deputies were chosen by the ballot, by the nomination of Parisian committees, or the appointment of the Minister of the Interior, the state of the case and the result have been the same.

The organization of our army is entirely Cæsarean. Though levied from the whole country, it takes cognizance of nothing that is local or provincial. Individual measures are repressed by the bureaucracy, which is subservient to Cæsar because it is detached from the soil, and is influenced only by the hope of promotion.

But the French magistracy at least enjoys independence? It did previous to 1789. The government did not interpose in the appointment of magistrates. This system, otherwise very defective, did not err through servility. The empire, artfully retaining a certain semblance of the ancientrégime, was careful not to do so where the independence of the magistracy was concerned. The emperor nominated all the magistrates, and made them removable at pleasure. This system did not suit the Restoration, and immovability was established. Under Louis Philippe, the magistracy rapidly diminished. The more honest felt themselves bound by their oath, and refused to serve the royalty of July. But the Third Empire, by its administrative practices, effaced the last trace of judiciary independence, and destroyed the permanence of the office by the prospect of lucrative advancement. Hitherto money had not seemed to be the aim of the magistrate. The idea of a career to pursue never entered his head. The magistrate did not have to earn his livelihood, and he belonged to his native place,where, regarded with universal respect, he lived on his own fortune, which was the exterior pledge of his independence. The needy and the ambitious did not seek such a post. The empire raised the salaries of the magistrates only to make the office accessible to that class of people who are ready to obey at whatever cost. Immovability was illusory when the greater part of the magistrates, desirous only of advancement, went from one place to another according to the ministerial humor. Besides, the government asked nothing better than to have in each locality transient magistrates who were strangers to the people, and only awaited an opportunity of ascending the ladder of promotion. This allurement was more efficacious than fear in effecting the change in our judiciary customs. The justiceship of the peace, which ought to be a kind of rural and local institution, and which for some time preserved that character, speedily degenerated. The empire at last ended by bringing it completely under the yoke of centralism. Instead of being the independent arbiter of petty quarrels and trivial interests that required immediate solution because they were not worth the expense and delay of a suit, the justice of the peace now found himself an electoral agent, and implicated in politics. He had to be chosen from the nomadic class of civilians. To prevent all ties with the people, fees were done away with, and his salary made equal to that of the judges of the inferior court. The pretext was made that the dignity of the magistracy did not allow a judge to receive perquisites. The truth is that there was a very different reason. The justices of the peace, being natives of the country, and already in possession of a patrimony, had no eye to the fees. Many of them had scarcely any. On an average, the perquisites did not amount to more than five or six hundred francs, and were not always easily collected. A mere income of seven or eight hundred francs was not sufficient to attract a stranger, especially when there was no prospect of promotion. The empire sought to bind the justices of the peace closely to itself, and deprived the office, practically speaking, of its perpetuity, for the same reason that it had made the assize judges removable. The justiceship of the peace, having been made a round of the judiciary ladder, became accessible to those civilians or agents who only asked to serve the government. Our judiciary army, as numerous as our administrative army, and composed of agents nominated directly by the state, had, then, but one course open to it. Its apparent immovability no longer hid anything. Those who are familiar with the affairs of the empire know what to think of a magistracy which takes it upon itself to sound its own praises. Though founded on very different principles, the French magistracy, by a sudden deviation, has gone back to the Cæsarean type of Byzantium.

This mixture of the appearance of freedom with despotism is natural to an absolute power resting on a popular basis. We cannot see how it could be otherwise. Ancient Rome afforded the same spectacle. The Cæsars never ceased to repeat that they were the representatives of the people, and the defenders of national liberty. We are not astonished that the French government which sprang from the Revolution has assumed this attitude. The Romans only admitted Roman civilization, which they called “Roman peace.” Their poets often speak of “the majesty of Roman peace.” Civilization, then, consisted in obeying the proconsuls,paying the taxes, furnishing recruits, and working on the roads and public monuments. At this price, the provinces enjoyed a little tranquillity. It is noteworthy that the French Revolution assumed to be the only light capable of guiding the world in the way of liberty, equality, fraternity, progress, civilization, comfort, etc. Its disciples still assert that France is continuing to fulfil this mission. This is what Louis Napoleon meant when he said that France alone contended for an idea. This immeasurable pride in thinking ourselves superior to other nations has had to bow down. It was not by virtue of our actual qualities that we undertook to assume such a supremacy, but, on the contrary, by virtue of the errors and vices that have sprung up in modern times. In the XVIIth century, when our moral superiority was acknowledged and incontestable, no Frenchman ever advertised any pretension to overrule other nations, or believed that our nation was destined to precede others in order to enlighten them. This pretension sprang up in 1789, at the time when a new system was promulgated in the midst of the terrors of the Revolution. Supposing this idea to be new, what right had France to impose it forcibly on other nations? Europe rose in arms to repel revolutionary or Cæsarean invasions, and before the coalition France has three times fallen.

We have been sobered by this experience. Therôle, brilliant as it was, has only left us bitter remembrances. It remains for us to govern ourselves without any pretension to govern others. Our political and military organization has suddenly crumbled to pieces. That masterpiece, which was a combination of contradictions, order, and disorder, is now only a ruin. Lamentations are heard on all sides. It is perceived that, under the pretext of equality, all Frenchmen have been reduced to equal powerlessness. When men of good-will sprang up on every hand to the help of France, leaders were wanting; there was no one to direct. Overwhelmed in the first place by number, we ended by overcoming that difficulty, and then there was a deficiency of organization. Leaders and discipline are not the work of a day. If education has not developed individual ability, in vain will you seek for genuine, natural, and acknowledged leaders. The spirit of the family alone, by forming the character, habituates men to a necessary subordination. The atheism of the state tends to root out of every conscience the sense of duty. How obey, if we do not comprehend the obligation of obedience, and if those who rule over us do not seem worthy of ruling us? Discipline is a certain moral order. It should first exist within us by submission to Providence and to the social order established by Providence. Imperial and republican despotism have aimed at moulding the whole French nation after one single type. And when the overruling, guiding will was gone, the whole nation was paralyzed. The Roman Empire had the same fate. It fell both in the east and west from causes analogous to those that are preying on us. An able despotism, a vast material organization, admirable military traditions, and the assent of the people, could not ensure the stability of the brilliant communities of Rome and Byzantium. The same principles must lead to the same consequences: no stable form of government; the supreme power constantly at the mercy of elections, factions, and violence. The Cæsarean system, whenever it obtainssway, gives glory, and grandeur, and brilliancy to society, but also leads to anarchy and incurable weakness.

Roman civilization was overthrown by pastoral nations: in the East, by the Arabs and Turks; in the West, by the Germans. Cæsarean France easily obtained the ascendancy over Italy, Austria, and Spain, because, already initiated into Cæsarism by Roman law, they offered but slight resistance. But when it undertook a struggle with Germany, its fortune changed, because that country has many strong elements opposed to Cæsarism and the principles of the French Revolution. Itsesprit de famille, its tendency to decentralization, and its official morality, superior to ours, are among the differences that carry us back to the invasions of the first four centuries. Cæsarean France has played a great part against modern Germany. But France is not so thoroughly Cæsarean as the Roman Empire. Its interests, its customs, and its traditions, impregnated with Catholicism, resist this assimilation. The Italian astuteness of the Bonapartes succeeded in making us think despotism would lead to liberty. Our eyes are painfully opened to the imperialrégimeand modern institutions. We can no longer deny that our social condition has approximated to ancient Cæsarism, and reproduced its principal conditions. The empire did not even conceal this imitation. The public works and the plebiscitum were the popular side of thisrégime. No nation of Europe has experienced anything comparable to it. In no other has the government become the contractor and general constructor of all the public works.

The Roman Empire alone presents a similar spectacle. The emperors provided for the amusement of the Roman people. They instituted festivals and games. They everywhere erected buildings for ornament or public utility, the ruins of which are still famous. The great monuments of our ancient monarchies were due to individuals, guilds, and the zeal of the faithful. The state did not interpose. Since 1789, the state alone has erected edifices because it alone has had wealth. This system of public works is only one form of communism. Though Louis Napoleon had no taste for the arts, he had a passion for building. This phlegmatic Cæsar, like the Roman emperors, made it a duty to amuse the people. Family gatherings and the old festivals authorized by religion did not meet with his approval. Such festivals are, from their very nature, anti-Cæsarean. They recall principles and sentiments opposed to Cæsarism. But the individual must not escape Cæsar. Public amusements have a certain influence of their own. They must divert the mind from all the influences of family, corporations, and religion, and partake of the vulgar communism authorized by the state. It is thus Cæsar undertook to amuse the people. Who does not know what the Paris theatres became? The towns in the provinces followed the movement, constrained by thepréfetsand mayors. Corruption, promoted by books and official addresses, was put in practice in every theatre of the empire. When the immense bazaar of the Universal Exposition was opened, Louis Napoleon invited all the sovereigns of Europe to be present. They had no wish to attend, but yielded to his importunities. They held a grudge against their Amphitryon. That was not the only mark of superiority he affected with respect to them. He proposed a congress to sanction the principles of the French Revolution. He neglectedno opportunity of influencing their policy. He was constantly shaking the thrones of Europe by his democratic pretensions. He believed himself alone to be legitimate, and pitied the other sovereigns who lacked the consecration of universal suffrage. Experience has once more shown us that immense powers may rest on fragile foundations, but the lesson will be of no use to the Bonapartes, who are ready to recommence. Shall it be lost on France?

Our revolutions and variouscoups d’étatwithin a century have transformed us into a Cæsarean nation. All our political elements bear the impress of this fatal destiny. The army, the magistracy, the administration, and the schools are disciplining us for this social system. There is no power but the state. Property is no longer managed according to the wishes of the proprietor, but by those of the legislator. Luxury has increased to an astonishing degree. How easily it has pervaded all classes of society! It is the government that has led us to yield to these new requirements of fashion. Economically speaking, luxury is waste of capital, and an unproductive expenditure. Old French society, founded on the right of property and the permanence of families and fortunes, rejected luxuries, superfluities, and useless expense. In everything, it had an eye to the solid and durable. That, in fact, was the character of French industry. The Roman Empire was a stranger to lasting influences and hereditary fortunes. Proscriptions and confiscations made short work of them. Nothing must appear to rival Cæsar, and manifest any power or independence. Christian society pursued and attained a different object. With us, the civil code takes the place of confiscations and proscriptions; it takes care that fortunes are as speedily wasted as acquired; it ruins by periodical liquidations families scarcely formed. In spite of this, the instincts of nature incline us to a certain care of our property. Speedily acquired fortunes, made by commerce, industrial pursuits, or legal transmission, became a source of anxiety to the imperial mind. They might foster independence! Thence the constant preoccupation of the empire to lead the whole nation into luxurious habits by the temptation of pleasures and large salaries. The multiplication of cabarets is an unmistakable evidence of this. Obliged to expend more than they gained, the office-holders remained in servitude. And from one to another the emulation has extended throughout France. Cæsar not only amused the people, but, led away by example, the people sought additional amusements at their own expense. Thus property, idly spent, and lacking the permanence that assures independence, ceased to limit or be an obstacle to Cæsar’s will. All wealth became dependent on the public credit and the stock market, and had an interest in the continuance of Cæsar’s reign. The whole interior policy of the empire was based on this principle. The political institution of luxury kept pace with the theatre and literature.

The immorality of Cæsarism may be readily understood. Morality in a nation is solely engendered by domestic life. But the family is thebête noireof Cæsarism. It was by destroying it and assuming its functions that Cæsarism succeeded in training the people. A man, separated from his family and the place where he ought to live, and transported to another region where he is only accountable to the state, a stranger to the people among whom he lives, no longer thinks about hismorality, but the service he must render to the state. How many functionaries, inadmissible in one place on account of tricks frowned upon by public opinion, are sent elsewhere without losing the favor of the government!

France was as surprised by the invasion as the old world by the deluge. Let us admire her patience and courage. We must remember, however, that it was not Cæsarism that saved her. The official world had disappeared. What remained rather clogged than aided the movement for repairing our disaster. Our deliverance sprang from the people not enrolled under the official banner. Without a government, France has shown her spirit of unity, and revealed her moral and material resources. It was not only the emperor, but the whole empire, that surrendered its sword to the King of Prussia at Sedan. In the same way, Napoleon surrendered to England after Waterloo. The high functionaries that only existed by the will or caprice of Cæsar, and who only served him by giving up all responsibility, were suddenly left in darkness. The emperor only soughtex officiosupporters. In a country like France, these are always to be found. Messrs. Morny, Billault, Troplong, Rouher, and Ollivier had pliancy of mind enough to say and do anything to palliate and excuse everything. Thus, without any counterpoise, the imperial government consisted in a single will which was intermittent, fluctuating, and a perpetual source of troubles and catastrophes to France. History is not a casualty. It has its laws which control events. It is well to repel invasions; it is better to do away with their cause. Demosthenes replied to the Athenians who sought news of Philip: “Why, of what consequence is it? Should he have perished, you would create another by your dissensions. The Macedonian domination is only the result of Greek anarchy.”

The French Empire, like the Roman, is the creation of historic necessities produced by an age of revolutions and the application of principles that only find complete development under an autocratic form. Anarchy, in a proud and powerful nation with a glorious past and a warlike spirit, will always end in military supremacy. Christianity alone was able to check the system of perpetual war kept up by paganism. It framed the law of nations, making them a Christian republic. By the Revolution of 1789, France abandoned this system. The Restoration of 1814 re-established it in part, but in 1830 the European treaties were broken. Europe had to be on its guard against us, and exclude us from its alliances. Louis Napoleon openly and officially expressed his contempt for treaties. With him France took refuge in proud isolation, affecting an intellectual dictatorship, the prelude of wars. War alone, in fact, can impose the will of one nation on another. This reign of armed propagandism has not ceased its manifestations since 1848. The public schools, all the academies, and the entire press came to the aid of Bonapartism. The personal enemies of the emperor were his most active auxiliaries. He was well aware of this. He carefully promoted Carbonarism in Italy, and Jacobinism in France—two terms for expressing the same thing. The attempts against his life only promoted his success, instead of being an obstacle to it. He recognized, so to speak, their justice, for he had taken the oaths of Carbonarism. When he realized that a crisis was at hand, he was not willing for France to escape the Revolution,the reins of which he held with apparent moderation. He successively let loose the press, the clubs, the secret societies, and even the mob. He weakened and degraded authority in the person of his agents, assured the pardon of all political offences, frequently changed his ministers without any reason or pretext, that the people might be convinced that they were all puppets. In this way, and under the pressure of invasion, he seemed preparing for a movement analogous to that of 1792. His death then would have thrown us into a state of anarchy which would probably have brought on the same invasion we have just undergone. He left behind him only reflections of himself. When he disappeared from the scene, all this was effaced. The regency of Eugénie amounted to about as much as the regency of Maria Louisa—vain imitation, and a manifest proof that, apart from the imperial person, there was no imperial government or recognized authority, and that the empire and anarchy were brother and sister.

The downfall of the French monarchy plunged France once more into a state of paganism. Our wars and invasions have been of the same character as the wars and invasions of the first centuries of our era. The French Empire had an insatiable thirst to invade Europe. Germany, on her side, has retained a power of expansion that recalls ancient times. She no longer emigratesen masse, but by the indirect ways of modern civilization. She first sends her pioneers. Her tillers of the soil go to the Sclave provinces of Austria and the Russian coasts of the Baltic. By their aptitude for labor, they take the lead, amass capital, and end by controlling the people that receive them. There is a German party in Russia, and this party has a controlling influence over the czars, or Muscovite Cæsars. The Sclave race, more impressible, more poetic, and less tenacious, less laborious, feels set aside by the new settlers. It realizes that it is the victim of its hospitable and beneficent nature. A reaction will soon take place. The czar will be forced to take the national cause in hand. Russia has not uttered its last word. She has been in some sort under foreign influence since she imbibed the corrupt Christianity of Byzantium. It was only under the direction of the French philosophers of the XVIIIth century that she finally became a part of the European world. After the wars of the Revolution and the empire, our influence greatly diminished, and yielded to German influence. Destitute of scientific or literary traditions, Russia sent her young men intended for office to the German universities. They returned with the scientific jargon of the schools, a strong dose of atheism, affiliated with the secret societies, and without any sympathy with the tastes and sentiments of the Sclave race. Thus favored, German influence has increased to such a degree as to cause anxiety in the Russian Empire. In its encroachments on Austria, Germany did not begin with pacific conquests. Silesia, seized by Frederic II., was colonized gradually. Finally, German emigration filled our banks, our counting-rooms, and our railway offices. This tendency to expansion could only be restrained or repressed by our alliance with a great nation. Unfortunately, France affected to be above European law. She pretended to promulgate a new law, a new civilization. She refused, in the name of the principles of 1789, to allow that there were any legitimate sovereigns in Europe. France, plunged intoCæsarism, found a rival in Germany, which had more ancient Cæsarean traditions, and which, less ravaged by revolution, was better organized than we for attack and defence. It is still increasing in population, whereas France, under the rule of economists, diminishes every day. This alone ought to warn French policy of the error into which it has fallen. The German Confederation, the imposing remains of Christian ages, was the safeguard of Europe, by maintaining a peaceful equilibrium in Germany. France and England, unwisely governed, allowed the German Confederation to be dismembered. The Germanic union under Prussia was evidently threatening. Lord Palmerston and Louis Napoleon, statesmen who had no correct notions of Christianity, could not see anything or comprehend anything. It was, however, evident that a peculiar kind of Cæsarism was to spring from this overturning of Germany. A slight knowledge of history and the German character should have been sufficient to convince Europe of this. The diplomacy which, by the treaty of 1856, arraigned the Sovereign Pontiff at its bar, rejoiced at the destruction of the Germanic Confederation, without dreaming that a few years later the Empire of Germany would consign the once powerful nations of England, France, and Russia to the second rank. At the moment of this change, it is not useless to remark how many deadly struggles the Papacy has had with Cæsarism. It was by the diffusion of Christian principles that it laid the foundation of Christian society.

The political life of the Papacy has been wholly spent in combating Cæsarism. It struggled against the Roman emperors for three centuries, and then against the heresies of Byzantium. In our age, Napoleon exhausted all his arts and violence on Pius VII. Pius IX. found himself at issue with Louis Napoleon, and Victor Emanuel, the Italian representative of Cæsarism. The contest of the popes with the emperors of Germany is celebrated. It was the Papacy that preserved human liberty throughout the middle ages. Germany had seized the imperial sceptre that had fallen from the hands of the weak successors of Charlemagne. In the XIIIth century, the Cæsarean rule threatened the whole of Europe. Frederic II., more perverse and more able than his namesake of the XVIIIth century, found himself the master of Germany. He triumphed in Italy through the support of the legists, and extended his claims to the rest of Europe. Innocent IV., by issuing the bull of excommunication against Frederic II. at the Council of Lyons, stopped the German Cæsar in his career, and put an end to the invasions of Italy he was constantly making. Italy, under the auspices of the Papacy, displayed a long career of municipal liberty.

The development of Cæsarism in France as well as in Germany has followed the overthrow of the temporal power of the Holy See. But the German Empire will always retain an immense superiority over the French Empire. It is less revolutionary, less democratic, less at variance with its past history. It is not impossible that it may combine with the local and municipal institutions of the country. Prussia is far from our absolute centralization, and there is nothing to indicate that she is to be subjected to it. She remains the ally of the great powers of the Continent. She could easily have rallied all Europe against imperial and Byzantine France. Let us not deny it: no victory of Louis Napoleon’s could have secured the left bank ofthe Rhine. The German coalition would very soon have drawn the rest of Europe after it. This struggle of one against all is a necessity of Bonapartism. Nothing can check it. Softness of manners, a refined civilization, pretended condemnation of war, philanthropy bordering on religion, boundless industry and credit, the military incapacity of Louis Napoleon, nor anything else, could have prevented the war from breaking out. “Revolution is war and bankruptcy,” said Royer-Collard. It obeys its nature. It upheld the Bonapartes in spite of a kind of material order and discipline they forced on the people; it required of them an armed propaganda which they were more capable of managing successfully than the republic itself. Louis Napoleon, with his mildness of character, and talent as a writer, desired a peace that would enable him to continue his utopian experiments in journalism. But he was not his own master. He felt that a revolution at home constituted only one-half of his obligations; the other half—revolution abroad—he was also determined to effect, though to his regret. He regarded the bombs of Orsini as a salutary warning, and submitted to his destiny. He extended revolution to Italy and Mexico. He destroyed the influence of Austria. Prussia profited by these disturbances to unite Germany. But Louis Napoleon made a pitiful failure. He dashed against a wall with his eyes shut. The pretext of a Hohenzollern on the Spanish throne was ridiculous, and the legislative corps and senate that countenanced it showed the measure of their political knowledge and independence.

It is difficult to comprehend by virtue of what principle or interest he opposed the choice of a Hohenzollern. Had he not rejected the hereditary principle? Had he not aided in overthrowing all the princes of the House of Bourbon who still reigned through this principle? Was not his own power based on election? And what did it matter to France whether that pitiful Spanish crown was on one head rather than another? What gratitude could he expect from those revolutionary sovereigns whose patron or director he constituted himself? He took the petty Subalpine king by the hand, and led him to the Crimea, and to the Congress of Paris, and thence into all the capitals of Italy. His plans were unveiled when he forced the unhappy Victor Emanuel to give his daughter to the imperial cousin. Who then could cherish any illusion as to the result? It was unfolded. Did the revolutionary union of the south spring from it? This union could only be effected by the unity of despotism. Napoleon knew it: his nephew forgot it. Revolutionary nations are necessarily at war or distrustful of one another, as the revolutionary factions of a nation are always contending, unless some master—no matter whether it is an individual or a party—succeeds in suppressing the rivalry.

This was the state of the case in our Revolution. Is it not a matter of public notoriety that the name of Napoleon excites only horror and disgust in Spain and Italy?

Louis Napoleon’s aim was not to subdue Europe by war, but to effect an internal change of government by means of revolutionary principles. This resulted in exciting all the great powers against him. He thought there would be a revolution in Russia in consequence of the emancipation of the serfs which he recommended to the Czar Alexander. He overthrew the German Confederationthough it was so powerful a guarantee for the safety of France. It was he who made William Emperor of Germany. The overthrow of the Confederation under the circumstances in which it took place necessarily led to the empire, as the overthrow of ancient France led to the imperialrégimethat has lasted till now. We need not be astonished at the efforts of the King of Prussia to re-establish Louis Napoleon. They were accomplices, though Louis Napoleon has been taken for the dupe. Not that he was not conscious of the situation, but he warded off the flashes of reason and common sense he had, and gave himself up to a hallucination. France imitated him, with the conscript fathers of the senate and the legislative corps at its head. Louis Napoleon contended for an idea, and he triumphed after his manner, after the manner of his uncle. Conquered and made prisoner, he was humiliated, not by defeat, which does not humiliate the brave, but by accepting his defeat. He yielded to the conqueror, he surrendered his sword. Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo, but he was not really cast down till he found himself on board theBellérophon. Then he realized who was victor. The lamentations of St. Helena reveal the liberal despot. Louis Napoleon also became an author and a journalist. He dreamed of returning to France. He published at Cassel under the name of his friend, M. de Grécourt, abrochuredesigned to influence Germany in his favor. He had no doubt of being as warmly welcomed by France as Napoleon was when he returned from the island of Elba.

There was no change in France. Our social institutions were still standing. The republicans had found nothing to modify in the wonderful machinery of despotism. There was nothing to prevent him from resuming his place. There was the invasion besides. Did the disasters of 1814 prevent Napoleon’s reascendancy in France in 1815? Was there any lack of senators and representatives to welcome Cæsar? Was not the popularity of the uncle the foundation of the nephew’s success? That was the sole cause of Louis Napoleon’s accession. This popularity was nothing more than the result of success. Power and success united and counted the votes, and proclaimed the result. The revolutionary power was not entirely destroyed by the events of 1814 and 1815; it became an organized system, having its regulations, its leaders, its journals, its secret societies, and its permanent committees variously disguised under the forms of beneficence, pleasure, science, etc. No regular government at variance with this many-sided, intangible power could be established. The regular government of France especially—the hereditary monarchy—could not take root again. Public opinion and enthusiasm are like stage machinery that rises and falls. We witnessed the workings of this machinery from 1848 to 1852. The inventors did not even give themselves the trouble to hide the workings from the eyes of the public. This reign of opinion has continued. The word of command from the emperor was echoed by the ministers, and from them by thepréfets,sous-préfets, and mayors. The entire administration in all its gradations walked in the same footsteps. By the public works, loans, and illusory promises, the mass of electors were so fascinated that they could refuse nothing to a government that was promoting such benefits. Universal suffrage is the character in the comedy—the simple, good-natured Demos of Aristophanes. Inreality, it is the emperor—he who has theimperium, individually or by a number of individuals, who votes at the general election. In the Cæsarean system, the emperor alone acts, but he acts in the name of the people, and as the representative of the people. He is the voice of the people. This must not be lost sight of when we judge the acts of Louis Napoleon.

In hisbrochure, he claims the good-will of the King of Prussia and Germany, because it was France alone that desired the war. He did not desire it; he was not responsible for it. This was pleading his own imbecility and the culpability of France. What! he did not set France against Germany? He did not break the treaties of 1815, or officially condemn them? He did not constantly propose the policy of his uncle as an example to France? He followed it without condemning an act or a principle. The Jacobinism of his later years was a mere imitation of the liberal ideas his uncle brought back from the island of Elba, and continued to cultivate at St. Helena—ideas that M. Thiers, in his voluminous compilation concerning the empire, regarded as serious! This was why Louis Napoleon declared him “the national historian,” and presided at the obsequies of Béranger, “the national poet.” This Bonapartism in verse and prose had only one practical aim—the conquest of the Rhine provinces. That was the favorite topic of old soldiers and the zealous members of the imperialentourage. People of more sense, who were not overscrupulous, resigned themselves to it as a necessity of the situation. Ever since 1852, it had been thought there would be a sudden blow aimed at Belgium or Germany. Was not Austria attacked in 1859 without any reason or pretext, and, it may be said, without a declaration of war, and in violation of all the laws of nations? When and where did universal suffrage countenance this? Where was it discussed by the ten million voters? What authority did they give their representatives? The imperialists and liberals have refused the electors the right which they enjoyed in 1789 to give directions to those they elected. The member represents, then, only himself, though individually he may have been acceptable to his constituents at the time of the election. The elector is not free in his vote, because he does not know his so-called deputy. And these representatives of Cæsarism have never been free. No sooner are they nominated, than they forget their orders and electors, and only aim at “the glory of obedience” to Cæsar, like the senators of Tiberius.

Louis Napoleon played to perfection the game of Cæsarism. Conqueror or conquered, he always kept a foothold. Victory immortalized him, and assured perhaps his son’s future career. And defeat was not to be imputed to him. As the representative of the people, he was only a passive agent. A docile instrument of the passions and sentiments of the people, he sacrificed himself. Did not this entitle him to the gratitude of his fellow-citizens? He regarded the republic as less popular than himself, and condemned by universal suffrage. Besides, he affected to personify in a supreme degree the republican element. It was not with respect to France he was anxious. He knew that the Cæsarean constitution of France left a sure way always open of regaining the throne. It was by foreigners he was overthrown. He preferred this fall to the necessity of presiding over new disasters. Hewas not sorry, either, to see the city of Paris, which of late had been constantly opposed to the empire, and whose enmity daily increased under its liberal laws, chastised by Prussia. King William thus effected acoup d’étatwhich did not injure the emperor, and made a return to despotism easier than at the beginning of the empire.La Situation, the Bonaparte organ at London, insinuated that Prussia had an interest in allying itself with Louis Napoleon, in order to reconstruct the map of Europe. And it did not conceal that the neutral countries, Belgium and Holland, were to pay for this reconciliation. In this way, Bonapartism, though apparently crushed, showed signs of life, and fostered its hopes. This was a sign it was not morally subdued. It was overcome only to be restored. But the French republic was not in a condition to restore it, because it confounded itself with it. It must be ascertained if Europe feared Bonapartism or France. Bonapartism aside, France is now a really peaceful, honest, Christian nation. She has only been formidable since 1789 through the principles of dissolution she has carried within herself and diffused abroad by means of newspapers, secret societies, and armies.

The idea of giving Holland to Prussia, and Belgium to France, was worthy of Louis Napoleon. Would Europe allow it? Prussia already preponderates. France would gain nothing. She could not rise from the inferiority into which she has fallen through late events. The humiliation that Cæsarism has inflicted on our country is not a thing of yesterday. Napoleon stated the problem clearly: France must subject Europe to revolution, or disappear before a torrent of invasions. These two alternatives have been successively more or less realized. The Restoration gave peace once more to France and to Europe. France, regaining her rank, menaced no one, and sustained herself by her alliances. She fell again in the Revolution of 1830. Foreign sympathy was withdrawn from us. All the alliances were broken off. The various governments, stunned by the rebound of the Revolution, stood on their guard. The monarchy of July sought to favor revolution moderately abroad, and to direct it with skill at home. From that time, Europe formed a coalition against us. During the first ten years of the Revolution of July, the public mind was disturbed as to the possibility of a great war with Germany. The liberal party used every effort to bring it on, without any reason certainly, in order to fulfil one of the conditions of the revolutionary programme, which is an armed propaganda. It was with such views that the fortifications of Paris were conceived by M. Thiers. The equilibrium of Europe was destroyed, therefore, to our sole injury. The empire developed the seeds of revolution sown by the government of July. France descended lower than in 1830; she even lost all regard to decency, by giving herself up to the revolutionary current. The distinguished men of talent who devoted themselves to the service of Louis Philippe withdrew from the scene, and were replaced by a crowed of nobodies. Assemblies, ministers, and emperor entered on such a contradictory course that one might believe our country had fallen into its dotage.

The Mexican war made America aware of our political weakness; and, in the East, our diplomacy lost the last remnant of its influence by taking a stand apart from Catholicism.The war of 1859 set Italy against us—a country so lately governed by princes favorable to France. The Italian unity and German unity consigned France to a secondary rank. Finally, the commercial treaties have made us subservient to England. Thus, in renouncing all idea of conquest, Louis Napoleon did not give up disturbing Europe. France served as the instrument of this work, and ended by being the victim. The material disproportion of forces could only produce a catastrophe. Europe was arming its men, while France, under Louis Napoleon’s direction, was plunged in revolutionary metaphysics. It does not require any great sagacity, however, to perceive that a revolutionary nation could not be in a condition to sustain a conflict with a nation that has remained true to conservative principles. What could be effected by combining all these shattered elements? How could we depend on these bruised reeds?

So rapid a decadence under the influence of anti-social principles has permitted neighboring nations to renounce the traditions that bound them to us. The admiration they felt for the superiority of our civilization yielded to the fear of falling under a despotism as unprincipled as it was senseless. It was from the hotbed of Bonapartism, the inheritor of revolutionary traditions, that have sprung the various revolutions which from 1814 to 1830 ensanguined all Europe. The republic of 1848, exhausted in the course of ten months, consigned its stock of revolutionism to Louis Bonaparte. He made it yield with usury. Until 1859, he hesitated and felt his way, being fettered by public sentiment, which was more conservative and Christian than he could have wished. He skilfully got rid of the honest people around him, and, once started, he never stopped again. From that fatal period, he was no longer his own master: he was the ready tool of the Revolution. It is surprising that the Bonapartes are not satisfied with reigning over France; they think they have a right to all Europe—a right to substitute the sovereignty of the people and elective governments for all the hereditary monarchies. The mission they claim secures the complicity of all the malcontents. The rulers assuredly take note of all this danger. They understand that their enemy in France is not France itself, but the Revolution.

The German Empire rekindles the fears that Louis XIV. inspired and Napoleon made us realize. Owing to a remnant of feudalism, it is founded on a much more solid basis than the French Empire was. When it attains its utmost limit, there will really be only one power in Europe. Even now, no one would think of denying its preponderance. The balance of power can only be preserved by the alliance of the secondary powers—France, Russia, Austria, and England. No one disputes the superiority of Prussia. In order to attain it, it would have been sufficient to be preserved during the half-century just elapsed from the revolutions that have so lowered France and Austria. Prussian statesmen labored energetically to unite Germany. By directing the mental training in the universities, the secret societies, the press, and the diplomacy, they have shown a system and energy that in France would have enabled statesmen of another stamp to bewilder and crush the genius of France, and bring our nation down to the dust. The Napoleonic Empire was one vast treason. It only allured France in order to deliver it up to foreigners. By givingher the choice between universal rule and annihilation, he placed her in an absurd position, and subjected her to certain ruin for the greater glory of Napoleon. It may here be remarked that no man ever made a more lavish use than Napoleon of the word “glory,” which the pagans so constantly had on their lips. It was comprehensible to people that lived to serve masters who, having all that could gratify pride and power in this world, aspired to glory as the supreme recompense. It was under similar circumstances that Napoleon and his nephew sought and obtained glory. Their names are imperishable. They are connected with catastrophes human memory will forever retain. They refused to reign peaceably by fulfilling their duties as sovereigns. Rejecting a divine authority, and recognizing no higher power, they made use of the people as the instrument of their passions. One had a passion for conquering Europe, the other for revolutionizing it. And France had to promote these designs, be drained of men under the First Empire, and be revolutionized under the Second, in order that the revolutionary contagion might be spread throughout Europe. War, coming to the aid of this work, led to the third invasion—the crowning achievement of the Third Empire.

The sole prejudice the French manifest in favor of the empire is that it maintained the honor of our army, and restored order. This is only true with respect to the Revolution. For the Revolution was absolute disorder. And the aim of the empire was not to substitute order for revolution, but to organize the Revolution by making it possible to the vulgar mind. It proved, therefore, wholly incompetent to the work of reorganizing society. Napoleon succeeded republican anarchy, and would have left us in it at his downfall, had it not been for the House of Bourbon, which saved us from foreigners and revolution. The nephew likewise succeeded his mother, the republic, whose death he hastened. And everybody knows that his natural death at the Tuileries would have been followed by a triumphant republican rising at Paris. He made every preparation for that. The republic of the 4th of September, 1870, was established almost as a matter of course, without violence, without noise. Therégentehad orders not to oppose anything. General Montauban declared to all who would listen to him that he should only offer moral resistance to the expected demonstration of the 4th of September. In fact, after Wissembourg, there was no imperial government. That government, then, was anarchical in essence and administrative by accident. It only rose momentarily above anarchy, and speedily sank into it again. It dreaded nothing more than a peace that would strengthen institutions, create new influences, and diminish Cæsar’s personality. Louis Napoleon was perpetually remodelling the different institutions, and without any apparent object. It was in this way he did away even with the traditions of the First Empire, and subjected the army to so many ridiculous experiences.

It doubtless seems singular—to accuse the uncle and the nephew of anarchy, when their putting down anarchy was precisely their title to govern France. But anarchy is not the only feature of the empire: there was despotism besides; and with these original principles there was an ingredient of political order which we do not deny. When this side of things became apparent, the peoplethrew themselves into the emperor’s arms, and hailed him as the saviour of the country. When all was lost, they took hold of the first thing that presented itself. In our modern France, the empire and the Napoleons are the only memories capable of fixing every eye and directing every vote at a given moment. The salvage obtained, half the work remains to be accomplished. In the latter part of its task, the empire always fails. Its principles hinder it; they only favor order under conditions which prevent its solidity. Why this special hatred kept up by the Bonapartes against the House of Bourbon? The Bonapartes have nothing against the Bourbons; our kings had long lost their power when the Bonapartes seized it. There is no personal difference between them and the Bourbons. We must look beyond to find the connection between the cause and effect. The Bourbons and the Bonapartes are above all that is individual and personal. They represent two opposite causes. By the intrigues of Louis Napoleon, the offshoots of the House of Bourbon have disappeared from the thrones of southern Europe. They are a living protestation against revolutions. The Bourbons have in vain allied themselves with the revolutionary party, and ruined their own cause; they never succeeded in gaining the good-will of their adversaries, so effectually have their principles, which they cannot divest themselves of, protected the monarchical cause against themselves! The House of Bourbon, in its downfall at Naples and Madrid, was elevated by its fall. The dethroned Neapolitan king has shown himself more Christian, more kingly, than before he fell. The Spanish monarchy, by the mouth of Don Carlos, has expressed sentiments truly worthy of a king, and contrasts with the attitude of the elective and liberal king who has just left. The House of Bourbon has been purified by the crucible of revolutions, because, in spite of its failings and misfortunes, it represents the principle of right. The Bonapartes remain true to themselves. They do not vary in theirrôleor in their pretensions, and remain attached to principles irreconcilable with the peace of France and all Europe. The recall of the Bourbons is an European necessity. It will be more easily effected when the wall of prejudice, which has barred the way, is wholly broken down. This European war had been foreseen from the beginning of the empire. Louis Napoleon, in throwing the responsibility of it on France, acknowledged that he yielded to the fatality of his position. What could be a more decisive proof, and what other could be wished, that the empire is war? No one in France desired war. Nothing was ready. The liberal party curtailed every year the budget of the army. Prussia gave us no excuse for aggression; all thechancelleriesadvised peace. It was then that, a prey to the evil genius of his family, to obsessions that deprived him of sense and foresight, Louis Napoleon made a sudden attack on Germany, without looking to see if he was followed, or how he was followed.

Our fault was in not being ready, say the Bonapartists. That is an illusion. At no price could the empire have been ready. The military organization, weakened by perpetual changes, the corruption and lack of discipline diffused among the soldiers and under-officers by means of the public journals and secret societies, the limited resources available under a system which affecteda kind of communism in the civil order, and constantly encroached on future supplies, rendered reform impossible. Everything set aside the thought of attempting it. The budget paid 400,000 men, and our army did not really exceed 200,000! A reform in France on the Prussian model would have required several years and the overthrow of all our modern institutions. Can we imagine, with the other expenditures of our budget, eight hundred millions more for the army? Prussia has been half a century in achieving its present organization. Germany has its gradation of ranks and classes. A numerous nobility forms the basis of its military institutions, and furnishes, in time of war as well as peace, the natural leaders of the whole nation. And we Frenchmen—we are still under the elective system, which is that of children at their sports. Leaders who are improvised remain necessarily without authority, unless they have been prepared for theirrôleby their previous life. Our military organization corresponds to our social organization: and it is the empire, a militaryrégime, but also a Saint-Simonianrégime, that has co-operated actively in the military dissolution of France. It was by being mixed with Saint-Simonism that it returned to the extreme notions of 1789 and 1793. This socialism that was to sustain the empire against the clergy, the conservative party, and the republicans, did it weigh one ounce in his favor? At the first reverse, all the socialism in authority disappeared. And Louis Napoleon has had no adversaries more implacable than all these socialists whom he fed, and who are making up for their former servility by their present abuse.

We must not weary of meditating on these words: France fights for an idea. This idea, under various names, is the Revolution, socialism, and the principles of 1789. Louis Philippe, that emperor on a small scale, and that “best of republics,” pursued the same crooked way. He classed his wars and foreign intrigues under the mild term of “liberalism.” He propagated in his way, by the assistance of the Assemblies, the principles of the Revolution. He gradually but persistently violated the treaties of 1815, which had put an end to twenty-five years of social war in Europe. It was in violation of these treaties that he ascended the throne. He interfered in Belgium in the name of the Revolution; he aided greatly in the downfall of the Bourbons of Spain; he occupied Ancona, in spite of the Holy See, and indicated a course to Gregory XVI. that was identical with the terms of Louis Napoleon’s letter to Edgar Ney. Finally, less Catholic than M. Guizot, he applauded the ruin of the Sonderbund, and refused Prince von Metternich the support of France in protecting the interests of the smaller cantons, our friends and ancient allies. By his inaction, he favored the revolutionary cause when he did not serve it with his forces. The revolutionary triumph at Berne soon extended to Paris, and Louis Philippe had to withdraw more speedily than he came. He propagated revolutionism in Europe during the whole course of his reign, with less display than Louis Napoleon, but with as much perversity. Certainly, neither Prussia, nor Austria, nor Russia were deceived as to the cause and tendency of the Revolution of 1830. They protested in vain. England alone took sides with Louis Philippe: thence the subserviency of our policy to that of England. Louis Philippe made the most of that ally of the Revolution: throughparty spirit, he sacrificed even the interest and honor of France. We recognize there the soldier of 1789, the former usher of the Jacobin club. And Louis Napoleon, for the same cause, humiliated himself more profoundly. He put his ministers, his assemblies, his diplomacy, our commerce, and our industries at the feet of England. And he certainly was not ignorant that England would never send him a shilling or a man. But he knew that England protected revolution on the Continent. He bound her to the revolutionary cause by the Crimean war and the commercial treaty. England powerfully seconded it in Italy and Spain. It was Bonapartism that English policy has developed even while thinking it was making use of it. Coming events will tell whether England has not, by violating her traditions, hastened a decline already evident and even alarming.

It is possible that, by rejecting the pretended English alliance, which was never anything but a lure, France would have been forced to closer relations with the Continent, and to conform to the European law of nations, which would have saved Europe from great calamities. The sovereigns, then, have some interest in withdrawing France from English complicity. The Restoration alone understood the practice of French policy, and alone maintained a firm attitude with respect to England. Its whole policy, interior as well as exterior, was national and uninfluenced by England. The conquest of Algiers was the most brilliant result of that policy. The Restoration made successful wars, and wars Europe had no reason to complain of; for they were carried on with the consent of the powers, and to re-establish the law of nations settled by the treaties of 1815. Such was the character of the war with Spain in 1823. Peace reigned then among all the great powers of the Continent, and it was solely to the House of Bourbon it was owing; that house overthrown, a spirit of revolt broke out on all sides, and made thrones totter. What profit did France derive from it? Condemning herself by her institutions to perpetual war, France pronounced her own sentence of death. She conquered under Napoleon only by the ability of her leader, when she found herself contending with one or two nations. She successively defeated each of her enemies. At length her armies were made up of recruits from every country in Europe; she incorporated the vanquished through the same policy as ancient Rome. It was an army composed of soldiers from all parts of Europe that Napoleon led into Russia. The disaster of 1812 freed Germany. Then, for the first time, a serious coalition was arranged, and Napoleon was defeated by the combined forces in 1813, 1814, and 1815. Louis Napoleon attacked Russia and Austria separately. He isolated Prussia from the great powers, but his policy of nationality brought on German unity. And it was the whole of Germany that confronted him when he merely wished to confront the King of Prussia. The King of Prussia, had he been defeated, would have appealed to the Emperor of Austria and the czar, who would not have failed him. Our revolutionary tendencies will always draw a coalition upon us. The late events have weakened the revolutionary party in Europe to such a degree that the support it offered us, and on which we relied, will be of no more avail. Europe, surprised by the outburst of 1789, yielded to our arms for twenty years. She then united, and, imitating the imperial military policy, carriedit to a degree of perfection that left us behind. What remains for France and all Europe but to agree in re-establishing peace by conformity of political principles? And in 1873, as in 1815, this peace depends solely on the recall of the House of Bourbon to France. It is to this work that Europe is invited if she does not wish to perpetuate a revolution which, after ruining France, will not leave one of the great powers standing.

The French Revolution has till now been the object of public attention. Princes and people have bestirred themselves for a century to oppose or sustain it. The inability of the principles of 1789 to establish anything, and the invasion of 1870, have opened the eyes of France, and better disposed it to make terms with Europe henceforth. But beside the French Revolution, now growing powerless, rises a political element that suddenly overawes and disturbs European equilibrium. A policy of defence and preservation ought to be directed against the Empire of Germany, not to destroy it, but to guarantee the safety of other governments by a general alliance and a new law of nations. France will never declare war against Europe again. Louis Napoleon is the last to make such a challenge. Personally, there was nothing warlike in him; but he represented a system that tends to war. To him this war was an amusement, a distraction. To divert himself by a general war, in order to escape for a moment from national affairs that perplexed him! The diversion was powerful; as well blow out one’s brains to drive awayennui. The mass of the French people did not participate in the madness of the Bonaparte system: they are victims as well as Europe. Only we have come to that phase of the system which is more particularly humiliating to France. The three great allied powers of the North have nothing more to fear from France. But this alliance of the North is no longer on terms of equality. We say great powers! There is now but one great power—Germany. And she necessarily threatens Austria and Russia by her military strength and by her expansive power, through her hardy and laborious race, that is filling the United States with swarms of colonizers, extending to the neighboring Sclave countries in Russia, and putting forth its shoots even on French soil. German preponderance will pursue its course. It is not universal rule, but a preponderance that will tend to it, unless a union of the secondary powers oppose it with a strong, resisting force. Germany herself will not be wanting in prudence. Her reign will last its time; it is sure of only a short triumph. In twenty-five years, Russia, in consequence of the progress of science and industry, will be able to subjugate Germany. Germany will then have need of France.

By a law of Providence, nations that rise from an uncertain beginning seem to attain their height suddenly, and almost as speedily begin to decline. We Frenchmen have had our day of power and glory in the middle ages. The age of Louis XIV. was our era of intellectual superiority and political preponderance. We have come down from that pinnacle; there is no denying it. Germany, by its material strength, is rising far above the point we attained. England, France, Russia, and Austria no longer have any influence, by their diplomacy and alliances, over the hundreds of petty princes and peoples that constituted the German Confederation. They are shut out of Germany. Any pretension to interferencewould make them a laughing-stock. All these powers, Russia excepted, have pursued a foolish policy, and are receiving the recompense due to their shrewdness. Inheritor of Richelieu, the French Revolution so disturbed Germany as to overthrow all its princes. The German nation has survived, and by the concentration of its unity has acquired a power of aggression and conquest it was incapable of under its former organization. The Revolution of 1789 resulted in the immediate elevation of England, which from the third rank rose almost to the first—a rank she would still have, had she not replaced the policy of Pitt and Burke by the policy of Lord Palmerston and his followers. Louis Napoleon created the Empire of Germany, but England applauded his course. All her statesmen have rejoiced in the humiliation of France that has resulted from it. Those debaters and merchants have advocated the establishment of an immense military empire in the heart of Europe, without perceiving that peaceful and industrious England would thereby lose its influence. She is destined to decline still further. Her influence on the Continent depended on the old balance of power, and preponderated through her alliance with Austria. In 1859, she betrayed Austria, and shamefully disavowed the treaties of 1815. Austria turned to Russia, or to Prussia, or to both at once.

The old kingdoms, the historic nations, are breaking in pieces. In reality, it is the Prussian Empire that has been founded, rather than the German Empire restored. Germany retains enough of Catholic life to give her a tone of moral and intellectual grandeur that render her superior to Russia and the United States. There is nothing to disturb her but the future, and a future not far distant, if the people of Southern Europe continue to abandon themselves to revolutionary principles. We are far from believing that France can never rise again. She rose after 1815: the same causes produce the same effects. What concerns Europe is that France will never resume herrôleof agitator. Bonapartism is still powerful. It prevails through the habits and necessities which concentrate and direct the whole political, moral, and mental activity of France. This storm over, the name of Napoleon will again disturb the public mind, and unite the suffrage. The republic of 1870 is dragging along in the old beaten track of imperialism. It has merely set up the men of 1848 or 1830—old, worn-out functionaries, whose incapacity has increased rather than diminished. It is time for a reaction against childish prejudices. The motto of the liberal school is: Revolution and Progress! It is well to know that a revolution is, etymologically speaking, a turn back. Our liberals cling to the days of 1789. In a few years, they will be a century behindhand. France rapidly rose from her helplessness of 1815 to the Spanish war of 1823, and the conquest of Algiers. Then a fatal revolution arrested its progress, and it fell back to a state bordering on that of ‘89. Louis Philippe kept us in subjection eighteen years. He was overthrown by the socialism which he restrained, but which with a bound returned to the theories of ‘93 in the name of progress! These sudden relapses disorganize and destroy the social machine. The Restoration alone was successful, because it was the regular government. The House of Bourbon is able to give interior peace to France. It is not the government of a party, for it does not derive its title from the popular vote. It appealsto the conscience and reason like a natural law and a national necessity. It has no other ambition but to make France once more a Christian kingdom by ensuring the general peace of Europe on the basis of a new public law. What great power will dare refuse her its aid, when so strongly interested in the same cause?

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