Let not France deceive herself. Not all the experiments she may try, not all the revolutions she may make, or suffer to be made, will ever emancipate her from the necessary and inevitable conditions of social tranquillity and good government. She may refuse to admit them, and may suffer without measure or limit from her refusal, but she cannot escape from them.

We have tried everything:—Republic—Empire—Constitutional Monarchy. We are beginning our experiments anew. To what must we ascribe their ill success? In our own times, before our own eyes, in three of the greatest nations in the world, these three same forms of government—Constitutional Monarchy in England, the Empire in Russia, and the Republic in North America—endure and prosper. Have we the monopoly of all impossibilities?

Yes; so long as we remain in the chaos in which we are plunged, in the name, and by the slavish idolatry, of Democracy; so long as we can see nothing in society but Democracy, as if that were its sole ingredient; so long as we seek in government nothing but the domination of Democracy, as if that alone had the right and the power to govern.

On these terms the Republic is equally impossible as the Constitutional Monarchy, and the Empire, as the Republic; for all regular and stable government is impossible.

And liberty—legal and energetic liberty—is no less impossible than stable and regular government.

The world has seen great and illustrious communities reduced to this deplorable condition; incapable of supporting any legal and energetic liberty, or any regular and stable government; condemned to interminable and sterile political oscillations, from the various shades and forms of anarchy to the equally various forms of despotism. For a heart capable of any feeling of pride or dignity, I cannot conceive a more cruel suffering than to be born in such an age. Nothing remains but to retire to the sanctuary of domestic life, and the prospects of religion. The joys and the sacrifices, the labours and the glories of public life exist no more.

Such is not, God be praised, the state of France; such will not be the closing scene of her long and glorious career of civilization,—of all her exertions, conquests, hopes, and sufferings. France is full of life and vigour. She has not mounted so high, to descend in the name of equality to so low a level. She possesses the elements of a good political organization. She has numerous classes of citizens, enlightened and respected, already accustomed to manage the business of their country, or prepared to undertake it. Her soil is covered with an industrious and intelligent population, who detest anarchy, and ask only to live and to labour in peace. There is an abundance of virtue in the bosoms of her families, and of good feeling in the hearts of her sons. We have wherewithal to struggle against the evil that devours us. But the evil is immense. There are no words wherein to describe, no measure wherewith to measure it. The suffering and the shame it inflicts upon us are slight, compared to those it prepares for us if it endures. And who will say that it cannot endure, when all the passions of the wicked, all the extravagances of the mad, all the weaknesses of the good, concur to foment it? Let all the sane forces of France then unite to combat it. They will not be too many, and they must not wait till it is too late. Their united strength will more than once bend under the weight of their work, and France, ere she can be saved, will still need to pray that God would protect her.

THE END.
LONDON:
Printed by W. Clowes and Sons,
Stamford Street.