I shall not speak of the republican form of government otherwise than with respect. Considered in itself, it is a noble form of government. It has called forth great virtues; it has presided over the destiny and the glory of great nations.

But a republican government has the same vocation, the same duties, as any other government. Its name gives it no claim to dispensation or privilege. It must satisfy both the general and permanent wants of human society, and the particular wants of the particular community which it is called to govern.

The permanent want of every community,—the first and most imperious want of France at the present day,—is, peace in the bosom of society itself.

A great deal has been said about unity and social fraternity. These are sublime words, but they ought not to make us forget facts. Nothing has a more certain tendency to ruin a people than a habit of accepting words and appearances as realities. Whilst the shouts of unity and fraternity resound among us, they are responded to by social war, flagrant or imminent, terrible from the evils it causes, or from those it seems likely to cause.

I will not dwell on this grievous wound. Yet in order to cure, we ought to touch, and even to probe it. It is an old wound. The history of France is filled with the struggle between the different classes of society, of which the Revolution of 1789 was the most general and mighty explosion. The contests between nobility and commonalty, aristocracy and democracy, masters and workmen, those possessing property and those dependent on wages, are all different forms and phases of the social struggle which has so long agitated France. And it is at the very moment when we are boasting of having reached the summit of civilization—it is while the most humane words that can issue from the lips of man are ringing in our ears, that this struggle is revived more violently, more fiercely than ever!

This is a curse and a shame, of which we, and the age we live in, must rid ourselves. Internal peace, peace among all classes of citizens, is the paramount want, the only chance for the salvation of France.

Will the Democratic Republic give us this peace?

It did not begin well. When scarcely born, a civil war was its first necessity—most unfortunately for the republic. Governments find great difficulty in rising out of their cradles. Will the Democratic Republic succeed in the attempt? If time is allowed to it, will it restore social peace?

There is one circumstance which strikes me powerfully, and causes me great anxiety: that is, the ardour manifested by the republic to be expressly and officially called democratic.

The United States of America are universally admitted to be the model of a Republic and a Democracy. Did it ever enter the head of the American people to call the United States a Democratic Republic?

No; nor is this astonishing. In that country there was no struggle between Aristocracy and Democracy; between an ancient aristocratical society and a new democratic society: on the contrary, the leaders of society in the United States, the descendants of the first colonists, the majority of the principal planters in the country and the principal merchants in the towns, who constituted the natural aristocracy of the country, placed themselves at the head of the revolution and the republic. The devotion, energy, and constancy which they showed in the cause, were greater than those displayed by the people. The conquest of their independence, and the foundation of the republic, was not, then, the work and the victory of certain classes over certain other classes; it was the joint work of all, led by the highest, the wealthiest, and the most enlightened, who had often great difficulty in rallying the spirit and sustaining the courage of the mass of the population.

Whenever officers were to be chosen for the bodies of troops formed in the several States, Washington gave this advice:—“Take none but gentlemen: they are the most trustworthy, as well as the ablest.”

A republican government has more need than any other of the co-operation of every class of its citizens: if the mass of the population does not zealously adopt it, it has no root; if the higher classes are hostile or indifferent to it, it can enjoy no security. In either case, it is reduced to the necessity of oppressing. It is precisely because in a republic the authority of the government is weak and precarious, that it stands in need of great moral support from the society over which it presides. Which are the republics that have lived long and honourably, overcoming the defects and the storms incident to their institutions? Those only in which the republican spirit was sincere and general; which obtained, on the one side, the attachment and the confidence of the people, and on the other the decided support of the classes who, by their position, fortune, education, and habits, bring into public life the largest share of natural authority, tranquil independence, knowledge, and leisure. On these conditions only can a republic be established or maintained; for on these conditions only can it exist without troubling the peace of society, and without condemning its government to the deplorable alternative of the disorganization of anarchy, or the rigid tension of tyranny.

The United States of America enjoyed this singular good fortune, but it is denied to the French Republic. Indeed this is not only admitted, but proclaimed and vaunted, by its authors. What is the meaning of the words Democratic Republic now current amongst us, and adopted as the official name, the symbol of the government? It is the echo of an ancient social war-cry—a cry which is still raised, still repeated in every class of society; still angrily uttered against one class by another, which, in its turn, hears it with terror directed against itself. All are in turn democrats as against those above them, aristocrats as against those below; threatening and threatened, envious or envied, and exhibiting continual and revolting changes of position, attitude, and language, and a deplorable confusion of conflicting ideas and passions. It is war in the midst of chaos.

But I hear it said, “This war is a fact—it is the dominant fact of our history, our society, and our revolution. Such facts can neither be hidden nor passed over in silence, and this is become final and decisive. It is not war that we proclaimed in proclaiming a Democratic Republic, it is victory—the victory of Democracy. Democracy has conquered, and remains alone on the field of battle. She raises her visor, announces her name, and takes possession of her conquest.”

Such an answer is dictated by illusion or by hypocrisy. How does a government, whether democratic or not, assert and prove its victory, when that victory is real and decisive? By restoring peace. Thus, and thus alone, could the Democratic Republic have proved that it had conquered. But does peace reign in France? Is it even approaching? Do the various elements of society, willingly or unwillingly, satisfied or resigned, really believe in the existence and permanence of peace, and come to seek tranquillity, order, and protection under the shelter of the Democratic Republic? Listen to the comments on the title assumed by the republican government which are universally heard; see the striking and menacing facts which are continually occurring, and which are the consequence or the proof of those comments. Is this state of things peace? Is there, I will not say the reality, but the bare appearance, of one of those energetic, wise, and conclusive victories which put an end, for a time at least, to social conflicts, and secure a long truce to harassed nations?

There are facts of such magnitude, clearness, and prominence, that no human force or fraud can succeed in hiding them. It is in vain that you repeat that the days of fraternity are come; that Democracy, such as you establish it, puts an end to all hostilities or conflicts of classes, and assimilates and unites all orders of citizens. The truth, the terrible truth, gleams through these vain words. Interests, passions, pretensions, situations, and classes conflict on every side, with all the fury of boundless hopes and boundless fears. It is clear that the first acts of the Democratic Republic threaten to plunge herself and us into the chaos of social war.

And does she give us arms for our defence, or open to us issues for our escape?

I pass over the name she assumes; I turn to the political ideas she proclaims as laws for the government of the state: so far from diminishing my anxiety, these serve but to increase it. For if the banner of the Democratic Republic appears to me to bear the inscription of social war, its constitution seems to me to lead directly to revolutionary despotism. I find in it no distinct powers, possessed of sufficient inherent strength to exercise a reciprocal control; no solid ramparts, under the shelter of which various rights and interests can take root and flourish in safety; no organization of guarantees; no balance of powers in the centre of the state and at the head of government—nothing but a single motive force and various wheels; a master and his agents; nothing between the personal liberty of the citizens and the bare will of the numerical majority: the principle of despotism, checked by the right of insurrection.

Such is the position of the Democratic Republic with relation to social order; such, with relation to political order, is the government which it constitutes.

What can be the result? Assuredly neither peace nor liberty.

When the republic was proclaimed, in the midst of general and profound alarm, one sentiment prevailed. A great number of men attached to the interests of their country, said, or thought, “Let us wait; let us try—perhaps the republic will be different now from what it was heretofore; let the experiment be tried—let it not be disturbed by violence: we shall see the result.”

They kept their word; they have excited no troubles, they have raised no obstacles, to disturb or to impede the progress of the republic.

The same sentiment prevailed throughout Europe—a sentiment inspired, no doubt, by prudence, and not by any cordiality or hope: but the motives which influenced Europe signify little; the important fact is, that no act, no danger from without troubles the French Republic in the experiment of its foundation.

On the other hand, justice compels us to acknowledge that the leaders of the republic have endeavoured to belie the predictions of its adversaries and the fears of the public. They have respected the faith of men. They have fought—very late, it is true, but at last they have fought—for the existence of society. They have not broken the peace of Europe, and they have striven to maintain the public credit. These meritorious efforts do honour to the men invested with power, and show, moreover, what the general instincts of the country are. But these men can only retard, they cannot arrest, the downward course of the state on a fatal declivity; they can find no firm footing, and lose ground at every step. They have sunk into the revolutionary rut; and though they struggle not to plunge deeper into it, they cannot, or they dare not, quit it. The acts of the republic are not, in all points, what they formerly were; but the republic is what it was. Whether as to social organization or political institutions, the conditions of order or the securities for liberty, the republic has nothing better to offer than what she offered fifty years ago. There are the same ideas, the same crude and rash experiments, often even the same forms and the same words. Strange spectacle! The authors of the republic are afraid of their own work, and would fain change its character and aspect; but they can produce nothing but a copy.

How long, whatever be its ultimate success or failure, the present attempt will last, nobody knows. But hitherto France has evidently reason to fear that its first and paramount interests—social peace and political liberty—will be placed, or left, by the Democratic Republic, in immense danger.