How far is the application to France, of the epithet employed in the title that heads these pages, a misnomer? This is a question that would be answered very differently by those who study its state of feeling, and those who judge its position by mere established fact. That the fact and the feeling are completely at issue throughout the country, is undoubted, indisputable. A republican government has been established by the coup de main of a small minority in France—has been accepted by the hesitation of surprise—has been maintained by the desire of peace and order:—so far goes fact. Republican principles were hateful to the immense majority of the country at large in the past, uncongenial to its habits and sentiments, impossible according to its views; they are productive, as yet, of nothing but confusion, distress, ruin, riot, and mistrust, in the present; they are looked upon with alarm as regards their results in the future:—so much for feeling. Fact and feeling, then, are at variance and in collision. The result of the conflict lies hidden in the mysteries of that future, the issue of which, at no epoch of history, perhaps, clearseeing eyes and wise foreseeing heads could less pretend to predict, than in the present chaotic hurly-burly of European society. The politicians who declared that the general spirit of the country in France was, in their vague and fantastic language of the Chamber, centre-gauche, or the advocate of liberal progress, may have been very right,—but republican it never was, republican it is not. Republican—without pretension to the audacity of a prediction but just stated as impossible—it certainly does not as yet appear ever likely to become.

In its present state of feeling, then, France—that is to say, the country, the provinces, the departments, or whatever France, out of Paris, may be called—is about as much genuine republican, as a white man who suddenly finds his face smeared over with the contents of a blacking-bottle is a genuine negro. But, for the sake of avoiding that confusion of terms and ideas in which the French themselves are so fond of indulging, to an extent that proves the deification of "the vague" to take far higher flights among them, especially in their republican tenets, than any flown by confused German head,—let it be taken as a rule, that fact is to have the precedence of feeling, as in most matters in the world,—and let it be supposed that the misnomer is no misnomer, that there has been no mistake, in truth, in the title of "Republican France."

Between France out of Paris and France in Paris, a great distinction, in speaking of the country, must always be drawn; although, in the matter of republicanism in the feelings of the mass, the same blacking-bottle remark might be applied to the majority of the citizens of the capital, as to the country at large. No family of grown-up daughters, who have been tyrannically kept in the nursery like children when they no longer felt themselves such, and made to wear mamma's worn-out dresses scantily cut down to their shapes, could be more sundered in feeling from their lady-mother, and jealous of her overgrown charms, her gaiety, her splendour, and her power, than the departments,—kept in the nursery upon centralisation system, and fed upon the bread-and-milk of insignificance,—are of the tyrannical supremacy, the overweening superiority, and the disdainful airs, affected to her despised progeny by Mother Paris. The pursuance of the concentrating system has thus produced an estrangement in the family,—a jealousy and spite on the one hand, a greater and increasing assumption of airs of supremacy on the other. The family ties between Paris and France are as wholly disunited as family ties can be, in the necessities of a more or less intimate connexion: the mother has isolated, in her despotism, herself from her children, the children have imbibed distrust and envy of the mother. The consequence is, that there are two distinct families in feeling,—there are two Frances; there is the France of Paris, of Paris that asserts its right to be all France, and the France of the departments, that, in spite of the assertions of Paris, desire to put in their little claim for a small share in the name, and would like to have their own little fingers in the pies of revolutions, and changes of government in the family, that mamma cooks up. True, they are supposed to eat at the same table, but mamma has all the tit-bits. They have a voice in the family council, but it is when mamma has already issued her dictum, and declared that such and such things shall be as she has decided it. They help to support the family establishment with the moneys which mamma declares they must contribute out of their heritage; but then mamma, they declare, spends a most undue proportion upon herself, in dressing herself out with finery, keeping up an unnecessary state, and throwing away the sums confided to her to overpay a throng of unruly onhangers, with all the prodigality of fear; while they, the poor daughters, are made to put up with cast-off finery, and to be thwarted and twitted by harsh governesses, and to fight, as best they may, with an obstreperous herd of unpaid pensioners, which mamma's mismanagement has excited to uproar; and then, after all, to kiss hands and thank mamma for whatever they can get,—scanty sugar-plums and many cuffs. Is this to be endured? The children grumble much, and particularly since mamma has chosen to make changes in the direction of the household establishment of which they by no means approve, and has only produced confusion and disorder in it. But at present they can do no more than grumble; mamma has the rod, and they know that she will use it; mamma has the supreme influence, and habit makes them think they must abide by it. There is no doubt, at the same time, that the children and parent would unite in a common bond of union were the family honour to be asserted against an attack from any adversary to the family out of the house. Their intestine jealousies would be forgotten for the time, for the maintenance of the common good—a fancied good; for, after all, mother and daughters have the same blood, the same temperr and character, the same vain-glory, conceit, and irritability, the same strong prejudices of ignorance; and they would join hands and clamour together in the same opposition to the stranger. But this common-cause making, upon occasions of extraordinary pressure from without, detracts nothing, at other times, from the mistrust, jealousy, and angry susceptibility of the children in internal affairs. In moments of family crisis, will matters always go on as heretofore?

Nurseries will be obstreperous sometimes, and children will revolt, and mammas may pass very uncomfortable moments in the face of angry daughters in rebellion. Will the children take upon themselves, at last, to protest against mamma's disdainful commands, and assert a will of their own, and a right to think for themselves? This question is one upon the solution of which depends the fate of France, as well as upon the many thousand chances which the capricious and ever-shifting gales of a revolutionary atmosphere may, at any moment, suddenly blow, like a spark into a powder barrel, shattering the face of the past, and changing the direction of the future. Twice already, since the revolution of February, has the question been nearly answered in the affirmative. The last instance, of which more anon, may be taken as a striking proof that the children may possibly not always submit to the dictates of the mother,—that family mistrust may break out into family quarrel, and family quarrel in nations is civil war. Who again, however, may venture to predict what shall be the destinies of Republican France,—what web of darkness or of light, of blood-streaked stuff or of gold-threaded tissue, it may be weaving with its agitated and troubled hands, or what force it may interpose to tear the work to shreds before it be even yet completed? Most may fear, none may say. But prediction, upon whatever cunning foresight it may be based, must always call a sort of feeling of inspiration, nearly allied to superstition, to its aid: and thus the fanciful mind may, without taking upon itself the airs of a Pythoness, give way to a little superstition, and yet, perhaps, be not too strongly condemned of folly. There exists an old prophecy in France, emanating from a monk of the middle ages, the authenticity of which cannot be doubted, or, at all events, cannot be disputed, in as far as it was in well-known existence at the commencement of this century. It predicts, in mystic language,—dark, it is true, but wonderfully clear after its verification,—all the many revolutionary changes that have taken place in France, and now once more proclaims the reign of the "sons of Brutus." "Armed men," it distinctly says, "will march upon the doomed city," "sword and fire will prevail against it," "the wolves will devour each other." May the seeming superstition of a fantastical question be pardoned! May not these words refer to the future outbreak of the provinces of France against the capital? If they do, in what sense, with what tendencies, to forward the views of what party, may it be? Be that as it may, however, it is not the obscure future that is dealt with here, but the present confused and uncertain state of Republican France.

As it may be inferred from what has been said, Paris, then, has put on its crown, as capital, to some purpose. Never did despot assert his right to dictate his autocratic will to serfs and slaves more authoritatively than does revolutionary and republican Paris to the provinces of France. No three-tailed Bashaw of old melodrams could be more imperative in his ordinances, more arrogant in the conviction of the indisputability of his will. The bare supposition that the provinces could have a will of their own would strike Paris dumb with astonishment. Paris has been accustomed to consider itself not only as the heart, but the head, and the arms and legs to boot, of the whole country. The inert body has no more, in its consideration, to do, than allow itself to be fed with what scanty morsels of bounty and importance Paris may choose to afford, and then not to dare to grumble afterwards if the food prove unsavoury to its tastes, or indigestible to its susceptibilities. Paris is "Sir Oracle," and, when it speaks, no provincial "dog dare bark." Paris, thus, is the great type of the mainspring of the national character,—which works sometimes, we allow, for good as well as for evil:—namely, of that mixture of vanity and overweening conceit, which may be found at the bottom of almost every action of the French. It calls itself "the great capital of the civilised world;" and thus considers that, although the departments may be admitted to the reflected rays of lustre that emanate from its superior glory, they must look upon themselves as mere satellites, created to revolve at its liking and its high will, and perform their revolutions in whatever direction it deems fit to make its own revolution. Let it not be supposed that this representation is exaggerated, or that it proceeds from the distorted views of a foreigner. Hear the Parisian himself speak; list to his expressions of contempt for those unknown and barbarous regions called departments; mark how he asserts the unutterable superiority of his Parisian essence; see how he tosses his head and curls his lip with an infinitely aristocratic air, when he condescends to notice them with a word; and never was Paris more eager in the maintenance of its tyrannical supremacy; never was it more despotically and autocratically disposed; never more aristocratic, to use the pet phrase of the day, than under the rule of soi-disant liberty, and of liberty of opinion, above all other liberties proclaimed by the French republic.

What were the expressions of the first republican minister of the interior, that type of republican exclusiveness and despotism, in his famous and rather too famous bulletins de la republique, issued to all France as the language and opinions of the government of the day? Paris, they informed the world, was the heart of France, from which all life and living principle emanated, through which every drop of the country's blood must flow, in order that it might beat in unison, and be refreshed with true republican vitality. Paris, they said again, was the hand that had created and fashioned the republic, and that was to direct its steps, lead it vigorously forward in its way—as it was the head that conceived, it was the hand that executed: it was more than all this, it was the soul of France—the pure and true essence emanating from the new deity, the republic. Paris, they asserted in as many direct words, was the mistress whose will was to be obeyed. It is unnecessary to point out how little such declarations were in accordance with republican principles, what little affinity they had with the three great watchwords of the day, "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity." Republicanism in France, according to those old traditions, to which those who call themselves the only true and pure republicans seem always to be looking back as the only true and pure models for their admiration and imitation, was always based upon despotism, supported by constraint, compulsion, violence, and even terrorism; and the first efforts of modern republicanism were evidently exerted to place their old, newfangled, statue of bastard liberty upon the same heterogeneous pedestal. The instructions of the same Bashaw-minister to the emissaries whom he despatched as Bashaws of lesser and fewer tails into the provinces, to see that they were duly disposed to fall down and worship the Goddess Republic, that had been set up, were modelled after the same and still rougher fashion.

The missionaries were invested with autocratic powers to make and unmake according to their own autocratic will; to send away functionaries who might appear lukewarm in the cause; to put in their places such acolytes as might better serve the altars of the goddess, and to offer up sacrifices to her, civil and military, judicial and political, as they might think pleasing to the divinity, or convenient and agreeable to their own hates and prejudices. They were particularly requested to travailler the country, to torture it, as the French phrase goes; and were taught, if they could not hammer the hard and unbending metal of departmental feeling to the shape they fancied, just gently to make the iron red-hot with the fire of terrorism, and then twist it to the suitable form. How well the workmen, in many instances, performed the task—how well they employed the fiery passions of the mob to produce the desired red-hot effect, and then strike—is a matter of historical fact.

In the elections for the National Assembly, the same dogmas of republican religion were strenuously enforced. No emissaries of the Inquisition ever used more moral violence to propagate a faith among suspected schismatics, than did these ministers of republican despotism to enforce the full, entire, and uttermost doctrines of their creed, even to the minutest articles. Where the moral influence appeared unlikely to penetrate as deeply into men's hearts as was desired, other and more direct methods were adopted to make entire converts; and, when these methods were found too mild to work the intended effect, and purge the land of moderatism and anti-whole-hog-ism, another stronger and more racking dose was administered: the mob was excited to overawe with threat and terrorism, and, where it could not prevent, to destroy. How should the departments dare to have a will of their own? The rebellious children were to be whipped like schoolboys into learning their lessons of pure and undefiled republicanism, and reciting them as Master Commissioner taught them; there was no better rod in pickle for such naughty urchins than the scourge of the fury of a mob, carefully taught another lesson, and one it was not slow of learning—namely, that it was master, and must constrain obedience to its will; while, in fact, itself obeyed the influence, and was the instrument of the master-spirit that ruled up above, and made the best, or rather the worst use of its rule. That all these measures failed in a great measure—those of violence as well as those of moral constraint—is attributable to a variety of complicated reasons, connected with the present state of the departments; and the how and why they failed, will be the subject of a few considerations presently.

What, again, were the expressions of the more violent and so-called only true republican party in the capital, proceeding from its organs, the clubs, upon the same occasion of the elections? To all the candidates who presented themselves before them, the same question was propounded. If, when the votes of all France were taken, it should be found that the departments declared themselves averse to the establishment of a republic, what would be the duty they would have to perform,—what steps would they take? Those who did not declare that they would turn against that National Assembly, of which they themselves might then be members, and take up arms to march upon it, were denounced as traitors to their country, unworthy of the votes of true men, and hooted from the tribune, in which they had dared to stand forward as future representatives of the people. It would have been in vain to insinuate to these good gentlemen, that, in the application of the principle of universal suffrage, in which every man was not only an elector, but eligible as representative, the voice of the majority would be the voice of all France; and that it was for all France, by the voice of its majority, to decide upon the form of government best suited to all France. In vain, indeed. The ready answer would invariably have been—that Paris was the mistress of France, and had a right to dictate its will; that Paris had made the revolution, and that, consequently, Paris was privileged to support the principles of that revolution, and to arrogate to itself all its advantages: that the country at large, in fact, had nothing to do but to give in its approval, and be happy that its concurrence was so far demanded, and that, should it dare to have an opinion of its own, woe betide it! All this insolent bombast of the ultra party in Paris might have been spared, however; the cause of "Paris v. the Departments" was never called into the court of the country. The departments had accepted the establishment of the republic as a fait accompli: they never desired to subvert the new order of things by another convulsion, that would have plunged the country, already so miserable, into an increase of misery; but they protested in favour of a republic of peace and order, upon moderate principles; and, lo and behold, Paris itself combined with them in this desire. The disappointed party of the directing master-spirits of Paris have been none the less furious in their expressions of contempt for the openly declared will of all France. They had long kicked down their idol of universal suffrage with disdain, as soon as they had found that, in spite of all the hidden machinery they had set to work in it, the idol had not obeyed their will, or declared their oracles. Universal suffrage they pronounced a hoax: constraint, tyranny, anarchy, conspiracy, civil war, were proclaimed by them the only true elements of the only true republic. Frantic with disappointment at the result of their own manoeuvres, by which they had been caught in their own toils, they seized upon the pretext of sympathy in the sorrows of another country; and, aided by the treachery of certain of their own party in authority, invaded the obnoxious Assembly, overthrew the government for an hour, and proclaimed a terrorist government of their own. Foiled again in this audacious attempt, foiled at least for the time being, they now endeavoured to patch up the shaking soil that has given way beneath their feet, and plunged their leaders into a quagmire, and to build new foundations for fresh aggressions upon the discontent of a part of the working-classes. For this purpose they have taken two newfangled tools into their hands, the one of impulsion, the other of repulsion—the one of enthusiasm, the other of alarm; and both are so vaguely fashioned, and of so unintelligible a nature, that the real fact of their existence can never be proved, although their use, their purpose, and their design, in the hands of these men, are very clear. The one of these tools is a bugbear, a phantom, a bogie, to which they endeavour to give as terrific an aspect as possible, in order to fright ignorant men over into their own ranks. This evil spirit, they declare, has an existence, although no one ever saw it, no one ever felt it, no one ever knew where it dwells. No superstitious people was ever endeavoured to be worked up into a more irrefragable belief of some mysterious demon that haunts them in dark woods and obscure places to devour them—nor, generally, with more complete success over the credulous; for fear is the most powerful agent over the minds of the masses, and more especially when the fear is of the unknown and mysterious: and certainly no demon was ever described with a more hideous or blacker face. This bogie, phantom, bugbear, is a supposed influence called "Reaction." No precise form is given to it, for that would be to deprive it of more than half its terrors. No! onme ignotum pro terribili is the policy. Nothing can be more vague or indefinite than this same monster, Reaction; it remains an Ossianic cloudlike spectre, floating no one knows whence, but bringing death and pestilence in its train. If the working-classes suffer, it is the Reaction, they are told, that is the cause of all their sufferings. If all their exactions, however exorbitant and impossible, are not conceded at once, it is because that horrible Reaction labours that their just demands should be withheld. If the most violent of their own body are not elected as the true representatives of the people, it is because that pestilential Reaction has cast a spell over the minds of all the electors. The Reaction has also, potent demon although it be, all the freaks and caprices of a lesser imp; it performs the strangest and most incomprehensible feats,—for if a discontented mass of workmen revolt unsuccessfully, and gain not their ends, it was the Reaction again that was the cause of all. The Reaction, for its own vile reactionary purposes, it was, that treacherously induced them to revolt, when they themselves were naturally inclined to be the most peaceable, contented, and the least exorbitant people on the earth. See how perfidious, Machiavelic, and Jesuitical, is this horrible monster Reaction! Pity it is that, in order to establish the fact of its real existence, it should not as yet have made itself visible to mortal eyes in any incarnate form! The Reaction is, however, no less, men are told, the enemy of the republic, the adversary of all true republican principles, labouring ever to overthrow it; above all, the enemy of the people and the people's interests, their undermining serpent, their secret assassin. It is already sapping, unseen, the foundations of the republic, and it intends to pull down the ruins of that august structure upon the heads of the people, and crush it for ever beneath them. In spite of the infinite harm worked upon the spirit of the lower classes by the establishment of the belief in this phantom, there would, perhaps, be no real danger in the effect produced by the clamours of insensate ultra journals, the preachings of agitating demagogues, and the insidious insinuations of anarchist meneurs among the crowd, did not certain members of the government itself, and some of those in authority, render themselves parties concerned to the propagation of the belief, either genuinely, from having been themselves carefully inoculated with the virus of false fear, until they have really taken the disease, or designedly, for the advancement of their own purposes—did they not, in fact, throw a sop continually to mob-lecturers, by insinuating their own conviction in the existence of "bogie" by their decrees, edicts, and proclamations, and, when they are called to put down anarchy, never obey without crying "Reaction" at the same time, and vainly giving the phantom a slap on the face. As it is—and herein lies the evil—the people are taught that the National Assembly, as it is now constituted, is the concentrated essence of the spirit of Reaction—that the representatives of the people, with but few exceptions, are the ministering imps in a visible form of the invisible demon. If a word of reason is spoken in the Assembly against the clamours of unreasonable demand—"Look ye there! reaction!" is the cry; if it prepares safe measures of repression against the open efforts of anarchy—"reaction;" if it defends its own existence against the subversive attempts of conspirators—"reaction;" if it attempts to establish the republic upon a firm and solid, but moderate basis—"reaction;" if it does any thing—"reaction;" if it does nothing—"reaction;" if it cannot perform impossible wonders for the amelioration and prosperity of the lower working-classes,—at which, however, it labours most hard,—"reaction—reaction—reaction; the reaction of aristocratic feeling—the reaction of ill will—the reaction of indifference and indolence;" thereby always meaning reaction against the true republic, and its true representatives, the lower classes. The phantom Reaction is thus used as a tool by a wild and violent party against the present order of things; against the moderate majority of the Assembly more particularly; against all things and all men not suiting its views, its schemes, its dreams, and its ambitions; and the bugbear is not ill got up to scare the credulous of the lower classes more completely into the toils of the malcontents, with the fear that reaction really may destroy that idol from which they have been taught to expect all the good gifts of "roasted larks," for which they have only to open their mouths, and "showers of gold," for which they have only to stretch forth their hands—that idol that has been lacquered over with the false gilding of delusive promises by imprudent rulers, and which the many still fancy to be all of solid gold—in a word, the Republic. The reaction, in truth, exists not, or exists not in the manner that people would be led to believe. If it exists, it is in the disgust of the more laborious and less tumultuous of the lower classes themselves, who, in their increasing misery, would be happy to accept the Lama of Thibet, or any other abstraction, with an absolute government, in the place of the false idol of their hopes, that has as yet only deluded them into greater misery— it is in the reactionary cry of the wretched, who call for "King Log," or any other senseless ruler that would bring with it peace, and order, and a hope of well-being.

The other tool employed by the designing malcontents—that of impulsion—is the banner upon which is inscribed "Republique Democratique." We have a republic, it is true, they say, but not the republic of our wishes. This is only a mere republic like any other: we want a democratic republic, and the democratic republic is taken from us; but the democratic republic we must and will have. Ask them what they mean by their "republique democratique," they will not be able to inform you. They launch into phrases which are but phrases: they lose themselves in a cloudy confusion of terms and ideas: they pretend to give you vague and chaotic explanations, that are no explanations at all: they know not themselves what they mean. Universal suffrage upon its broadest basis, with all the rights and privileges thereto attached, in their most democratic sense, is no democratic republic according to their view. What is? Who can tell?—certainly not they. "They have clamoured for the moon," says a wit of the day, "and the moon has been given them; and now they cry, 'we are betrayed; we wanted the sun, and the sun we will have.' But have a care! the sun will blind your eyes, my friends, and you will stagger in still greater darkness; the sun will burn your fingers, and you will smart beneath the blisters. But they heed not; they still clamour for the sun." At all events, the banner on which flaunts aloft the words—"Republique dÉmocratique" is a good rallying banner for all malcontents, a good banner under which to enlist the unwary among their ranks. It is a cry, a clamour, and all the more enticing because it is vague, unexplained, mysterious in its fresh promises of some fancied good that has not yet arrived, full of the great and alluring unknown. Thus it serves a purpose.

But to return from this long digression upon the efforts of subversive parties, to the state of feeling that subsists in Republican France between its now well-sorted and divided elements—Paris and the provinces.

What are, again, the expressions used by the lower classes with regard to the departments? what the feelings they express? Ever the same. Paris, they declare, makes, has made, and will make all the revolutions of the country. Paris, consequently, is all in all in France: Paris is the mistress, and the queen, the supreme arbitress of the destinies of France: Paris must be obeyed in all its wishes and its high will. What were the words of the workmen of the national workshops, in a late revolt, to the Minister of Public Works? They were told that there was no longer any work for them in the capital, that their pretended labour was an irony of labour, that the country paid them for doing nothing, and that they were eating the bread of idleness under the name of work: they were told that they were to be dispersed in the provinces, to be employed upon great works of public utility—upon railroads and canals, that stood still for want of hands: while money was lavishly promised them for this work, which the treasury could no longer afford upon unproductive labour. What was their answer? That they, the people, had made the revolution in Paris, that they were the masters of Paris, that Paris was theirs, to work in it their work; that, as masters of Paris, they were not to be bid leave it; that leave it they would not; that if labour failed, money must be found them at all events, or they would find means of taking it; in short, that they would not be degraded by being sent into the provinces. The workmen of Paris claim, then, to be the masters of the capital, and still more, in their esteem, the masters of all France. The people of Paris, then, is the people; it owns no other. Now the people, in modern republican phrase, and alas! in government decrees also, is by no means the nation; it means the lower classes alone. The people, it has been previously declared, is the sovereign people, whose voice is the voice of God; then, they reply, by the simplest reasoning, the sovereign people, whose voice is the voice of God—it is alone we: it is the lower classes. But there is still another deduction to be drawn. Among the lower classes it is only the active, the stirring, the discontented, the disorderly and tumultuous, who come forward in evidence as the representatives of this people. And thus it is very clear that the sovereign people, whose voice is the voice of God, the sovereign of France, is a small body of uneducated, misled, and wrong-headed men in the capital. So stands the account in theory. And who can deny that, in theory, they are in truth the masters? Who shall say when the chances of revolutionary struggles may not make them so in fact?

So stands the state of feeling on the side of Paris—how stands it on the other side?

When the revolution of February broke out, the departments scarcely knew themselves, their wishes, or their feelings. They had no mutual understanding. They were taken by surprise. They had not the time to consult their sentiments. Notoriously anti-republican as has been shown to have been the spirit of all France in the departments, they accepted, however, from old habit, the dictum of Paris: they accepted, as has been before remarked, from that species of resignation shown in France to a fait accompli: they accepted from a wish to avoid all further convulsion, from a love of established order in whatever shape it might come—from a hope that, whatever the form of government proclaimed and imposed upon the country, all would "go well." And besides, the republic, they were told, was only a provisional form of government at a moment of crisis, when no other could be adopted: upon its future form of government, the country, it was said, was to be freely consulted: the provinces were not prepared for the ulterior dictum of Paris, that, without consulting the nation at all, the republic was to be considered as definitive; and that those who desired a change would be regarded as traitors to their country. But France is not what it was; it is enlightened by the experience of successive revolutions. The jealousy of the departments, towards despotic Paris had long been boiling in men's hearts: it did not at first boil over; but when, instead of order and peace, the provinces found that the new government produced only results of disorder, animosity, and ruin, the departments began to grumble and murmur openly—for the first time they seemed determined to show that they ought to have, and would have, a will of their own. In the commencement all was tranquil. In some parts of France the republic was accepted, if not with that enthusiasm which lying Parisian papers would have induced the world to believe, at all events with a species of contentment, arising from the trust that a more equitable popular government would relieve the mass from some of those charges which weighed so heavily upon them under the former government, and remove constraints that were painful to them. In other parts, there prevailed a sort of sullen resignation to the establishment of a rÉgime which was dreaded from an experience of a hateful past, and was repulsive to its tastes—but it was a resignation to the fait accompli. Some thus hoped, and others feared; but all combined in assuming an attitude of quiet expectation.

In this state was France, when an imprudent Minister of the Interior, pushed on by ambitious, designing, misguided, and reckless men, sent down as a scourge upon the country those commissaries of obnoxious memory, who were publicly charged to work their will upon the departments as they pleased, by the means they pleased, by whatever oppressive or repressive measures they pleased, provided they worked the suspected and mistrusted departments into a proper feeling of true republican principle, according to the most ultra traditional doctrines of old republicanism. Down upon the country came the autocratic commissaries with these instructions; and, in too many instances, with the best intentions of torturing and tormenting the country, after their own fashion and according to their own views, to their heart's content. Down they came, with their history of the first republic in their heads, and the desire in their hearts of emulating the zeal of those fearful representatives of the people of the last century, who ruled in the departments, each a petty, but a bloody tyrant. To all alike the same violence of disposition must not be attributed: there were a few more prudent and better-thinking men among the number—although they, in certain instances, were afterwards accused in high quarters of mild laxity, and recalled as suspected of moderatism; but the many were evidently disposed to play the tyrant to the life, in their desperate measures to twist the country to their will. The times, however, were changed; the spirit of the age no longer permitted of the same violence. Messieurs les Commissaires could not well proceed by the old-established and expeditious method of cementing the foundations of republics, one and indivisible, by blood, or erecting the scaffolding of the edifice on scaffolds. Shootings, drownings, and guillotinings were instruments rather too rough to be accepted by the manners of the time. But they had other means in their power, and according to the tenor of their instructions, which they thought to use, and attempted to use, with just as much effect. They dismissed functionaries in wholesale numbers—put their creatures, or those who cringed and worshipped, in their places, with orders to brow-beat and bully the recalcitrant, and with the exhibition of high example before their eyes. They threatened and accused; and when these means failed, according to their fancy, or when they were too mild for the taste of Master Commissary, the other underhand instruments of terrorism, already mentioned, were employed to make men crouch and tremble. The manner in which mobs have been excited against the better classes, or those who were suspected of moderatism, by manoeuvres unequivocally traced to the agency of the commissaries themselves, and the frightful excesses committed, are matters of common notoriety and of newspaper history. The scenes of the old Revolution were resorted to, although in another form; and not only supposed anti-republican sentiment, but moderatism, was endeavoured to be kept down by agents of terror, and the ever-ready riotous populations of the great towns. It would be an endless and a useless task to re-transcribe all the scenes of the violence of an insensate mob, secretly got up by the republican agents in authority, more than secretly connived at, and openly and avowedly excused and applauded. The rod that the commissary himself could not prudently employ, he placed in the hands of a designedly inflamed and infuriated people, to scourge the country to his will. One of the strongest instances, however, may be found in that state of continual terror on the one hand, and violence on the other, which for many long weeks hung over the head of the doomed city of Lyons. See there the mob constituting itself into illegally armed bodies, sundered from and inimical to the national guards, assuming names, such as les voraces and les dÉvorants, by which they themselves marked their character, ruling the whole city of Lyons by fear; exacting, spoliating, arresting suspects at will; searching the houses of quiet inhabitants under the pretext of conspiracies against the republic that did not exist, and of concealed arms, such as they themselves illegally bore, that never could be found; dragging trembling priests from the altar to be confined in cellars, because they were suspected of anti-republicanism; laying their hands upon church plate as the property of traitors; liberating prisoners arrested for revolt and disorder—arresting the magistrates who had condemned them; dictating their orders to military officers for the release of soldiers put under restraint; pulling a general from his horse, and nearly immolating him to the wrath of their high justice in the streets; commanding the fortresses, making barricades at the least opposition to their will, domineering over the whole city as masters—a herd of power-intoxicated savages—and the commissary looking on, applauding, sanctioning their deeds, rubbing his hands with satisfaction, and approving them with the words "Allez, mes enfans! vous faites bien!" Such scenes as these, carried to the utmost limits of anarchy and excess in Lyons, have been exhibited also in almost all the great towns of France, with all the effect of well-applied terrorism. There is scarcely one that has not similar outrages, from the violence of an excited mob, to lay to the charge of him who was set in authority over them—to work his will, so said the letter of his instructions—but to preserve peace and order, in a country where convulsions, collisions, and commotions were so infinitely to be dreaded and avoided—so should his duty have told him. It ought to be said, at the same time, that the acknowledged authorities of the government were aided in their high revolutionary mission, and in the extraordinary means they employed in its execution, by less acknowledged agents, in the persons of emissaries from the violent ultra clubs of Paris; who, arrogating to themselves the right to the true expression of the only true feeling of Paris—and consequently, À fortiori, of all France—racked the country with their manoeuvres, their excitements to violence, their bullying threats and intimidations. Unacknowledged by government authority as they were, however, their missions were bestowed on them by the quondam friends and fellow-conspirators, under the former reign of the Minister of the Interior; their expenses were supported by funds, supplied no one could say by what hand, although most might divine; their measures were evidently taken in accordance, and in perfectly good understanding, with the departmental commissary.

What, however, was the result? The very reverse from that intended by Messieurs les Commissaires and their supporter, the Minister of the Interior. They over-reached themselves, and worked the very effect they attempted to exterminate. Instead of subjugating the departments to their will of ultra-republicanism by the violence of terrorism, they almost roused the whole better feeling of the country, at first quietly disposed and resigned, against the very principles of republicanism in general. The sentiment at first accepted was soured and embittered; the discontent and aversion daily increased; and it was more than once openly affirmed that the departments were ready to revolt, and formed the design of marching upon Paris. That this subject was actually discussed in large, and not even secret meetings in the provinces—and even in such as had been always considered ultra-liberal and democratic in their opinions, as parts of Normandy, for instance—admits of but little doubt; and this feeling, although it was never actually embodied in any living and active fact of resistance, may be taken as one example in support of the opinion, that the children may not always prove so submissive to the dictates of the mother, and may one day raise their voices and hold forth their hands to dispute her will. The open and general outbreak of the provinces, which was at one time expected, and was the common topic of conversation in Paris, was suppressed, however, by the influence of the better-thinking and more prudential men in the country. But the feeling of opposition and resistance did not fail to manifest itself in minor demonstrations. Expostulations were at first made against the tyranny and the inflammatory manoeuvres of the government commissaries; then broke out angry remonstrances on the part of the bourgeoisie, backed by the better and quieter of the working-classes; and at last, when all these more legitimate means failed, the populations of several of the larger towns rose against the provisional despot, who played the autocrat and the tyrant in the name of "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity."

The national guards took up arms to demand the revocation and the departure of the obnoxious commissary. The commissary, in opposition, acted the self-same part of which a despotic king has since been so violently accused by the republican journals. As Ferdinand of Naples is said to have excited the dregs of the populace, the lazzaroni, to aid him in a reactionary movement in his favour, so did even the republican commissary after the self-same system. He caused the mob to be roused to his assistance, as to that of the only true democratic friend of the people; he called upon them to take up arms and combat in his defence: the lazzaroni mob of the departments was the weapon he wielded to overcome the resistance of the majority to his will. In most instances the recalcitrant part of the provincial populations prevailed. In several of the larger towns, as in Bordeaux, Bourges, and many others, the commissary was obliged to take to flight: in some the palace of the little tyrant was stormed, he himself was made prisoner, and was taken to the railroad, and "packed off" back to that Paris which had sent him. In a very few instances only the influence of the commissary gained the day: in still less was he again returned, to be enforced upon the department from which he had been driven; and in one case he was sent back by the powers that were, only to be again ignominiously expelled.

In the department of the AriÈge, at the town of Foix, a journal, founded under the auspices of the commissaries of the government, and professing the most violent ultra-republican doctrines, was publicly burnt by the magistrates and most influential persons of the place, to show their contempt and abhorrence of the principles and actions of the authority set over them. Other instances of the general opposition, either to the commissaries themselves or to the agents they had appointed and supported, on account of their violence, their tyrannical measures, and their anarchical principles, are too numerous to quote; and, generally speaking, the feeling was so strong, that the Messieurs les Commissaires, or rather, les Citoyens Commissaires, were obliged to give way before the expression of popular indignation.

The departments then, for the first time, have begun to show that they are determined not to be treated as the mere humble serfs of the capital,—that they are resolved to have a will and an action of their own. The results have been such that, even among the staunch republicans in the provinces, and among those who look to the republic as the only form of government at present suitable to France, symptoms of a tendency to a federal system have indubitably sprung up,—of a tendency, in fact, to that system in opposition to which, under the first revolution, the title of "one and indivisible,"—so little understood at the present day, so constantly repeated by the herd without any real meaning being attached to it,—was bestowed upon the republic. The fear of a powerfully organised resistance to the sacred principles of French republicanism,—unity and indivisibility,—is, at this very time, one of the bugbears by which those in power are terrified and haunted. But, whether this fear be well founded or not, it suffices for the present purpose, to show that a disunited feeling exists to a great extent between the departments and the capital; and that, while on the one hand the former begin to show a disposition to resist the overweening influence and tyrannical importance of the former, on the other, a dread is beginning to be expressed of their growing discontent, and a suspicion is constantly expressed of their increasing tendency to reactionary principles, likely to prove eventually subversive to the republic. Among those "lookers-on," who proverbially "see the most of the game," there are some who, in their exceptional and impartial position as foreigners, are able to see expressed in letters from the provinces "curses, not loud, but deep," against "that detestable, unruly, and insolent Paris, that has made alone a hateful revolution, which it imposes on all France." It cannot, however, be said, at the same time, that any reactionary feeling against the republic itself, and a republican form of government, prevails in the country at large. That which is thought to be stigmatised by the ultra party with the term of "reaction," appears, as yet, to be nothing but the acceptation of a republic based upon the principles of peace and order; but, at the same time, an opposition to all views and doctrines likely to produce disorder and anarchy. And yet still, in another sense, the feeling of the country at large cannot be said to be strictly republican: the "true men" might be in vain sought except in the disorderly, tumultuous, excitable, and easily stirred populations of the great manufacturing towns.

Shortly after the appointment of the obnoxious commissaries, several causes arose to increase the discontent of the departments, not only among the ci-devant upper and middling classes, but among the lower classes,—particularly in the agricultural districts, and more especially among that peasant population that has so universally in France acquired a little property in land. One of these causes was the imposition of the new taxes. Under the former rÉgime, France had been crushed down by the weight of its impositions. One of the first advantages of the republic was announced, in official proclamations, to consist in the removal of taxes, and in the enormous diminution of state expenses necessarily attendant upon a republican form of government. Already the country people looked to a release from the greater part of their obligations: the system of "no taxes at all," they thought, in their naÏvetÉ, was to follow; instead of which came very shortly the decree, begging the country for the loan of a certain proportion of the taxes for the ensuing year beforehand, in order to meet the deficiencies in the finances, followed up almost immediately by the more imperative ordinance, imposing the additional 45 per cent in support of the increased, not diminished, expenses of the republican government. In many parts of the country the peasant population refused to pay this additional tax, or responded only to the demand with that equivocal answer, so characteristic of the French peasant, "We'll see about it." It nevertheless, however, refused to pay at the same time the rents of its landlords, upon the pretext that it was ruined by the revolution, and the exactions of the republic. It was in vain that the government protested that these measures were necessitated by the financial dilapidations of the dethroned dynasty. Clear-sighted enough where their own interests are concerned, the French peasants in the provinces replied by denunciations of that odious Paris. Paris, they declared, had chosen to make for the nonce a revolution in which they had not aided, and which they had not desired; and then Paris turned to its own advantage alone the results of that revolution. It had imposed upon all France, by calling for resources from a country already drained, to be lavishly squandered in rewarding the idleness of its own tumultuous and unruly inhabitants among the working-classes, which it dreaded, by the establishment of its expensive so-called ateliers nationaux, and by paying fresh troops under the name gardes mobiles,—when the standing army was already such a burden the country,—for the sake of draining off and regularising the worst dregs of its own population, and satisfying the caprices of a riotous Parisian mob, that chose to object to the presence of the old military force among it, while it accepted a new defensive and repressive force, in addition to the former, under a new title. Upon such questions, of vital importance to their own interests, the country people of the provinces were not disposed to listen to argument or reason; and in the discontent at the exorbitant exactions of the capital the jealousy of the departments towards Paris waxed stronger and stronger.

Another cause, which added greatly to the increasing apprehension and aversion was the preaching of the communist doctrines in Paris, upon the first establishment of republican principles, and the support apparently given to these wild and spoliating principles by certain members of the Provisional Government itself. If there be any feeling more alive than any other in the breast of the French peasant, it is that attached to the acquirement and the possession of landed property in however humble a form, be it but a small field or a tiny vineyard. If he has any hope, any ambition, any sentiment, which he thinks worth living for, it is the extension, by any and every means, of his small domain. On the fact of this possession are concentrated all the mainspring motives and agencies of his whole existence—in this, his industry, his talent, his cunning, his thoughts, his affections, his very love for his children, to whom he hopes to transmit it. The great mobile of the character of the French peasant is self-interest in this respect. The doctrines, then, which preached that the possession of all landed property by individuals is an infamous spoliation of the res publica, filled the country people in the provinces with the liveliest alarm, and contributed to establish a still greater hatred to a state of things that tended to produce results so fatally detrimental to all that they held dear. The Parisian, almost as blindly ignorant of the state of his own country—which, in his theory that Paris is all France, he looks upon with indifference, if not contempt—as he is proverbially utterly ignorant of every other country beyond the frontiers of France, even the most neighbouring—and, in fact, of every thing that touches upon geography or the state of nations, of which he has only the vaguest and most incorrect notions—thought that all his wild fraternity schemes, developed and accepted by those who possessed nothing, in the capital, would be received with enthusiasm also by the "miserable, oppressed, and tyrannised inhabitant of the fields and plains;"—such was the language used, and eagerly caught up. The Parisian soon found, by experience, that he had made a gross mistake. The emissaries sent down into the provinces by the professors and high-priests of communism, or by the ultra clubs, and supported, there is every reason to believe, by the members of the government before alluded to, met only with the most active repulsion. Their Utopian ideas of universal fraternity and spoliation of property were scorned, scouted, and opposed: themselves were hooted, pelted, almost lapidated as incendiary enemies of the peasant. "The innocent and humble inhabitant of the fields" was indignant, insulted, aggrieved, that he should be so contemptuously considered "miserable and oppressed:" he showed himself in the light of the landed proprietor, the most avariciously interested in the possession of property, and by no means the naif individual the Parisian had been accustomed to believe him, according to his text-books of vaudevilles and melodramas. The agents of communistic doctrines were forced to retreat in dudgeon, to declare the French peasant the most ignorant and pig-headed animal upon earth, still under the yoke of the tyrants, and endoctrinÉ by the aristocrats; and to avow that the departments were not ripe for the enlightenment of communism, perhaps even to denounce them as infamously reactionary. Certain it is that communistic doctrines found no enthusiastic disciples in the country; or, if the propagandism made any steps, it was after the fashion so characteristically depicted in a caricature published by the Charivari, in which a peasant appears before the mayor of his commune to say, that, since a general partage des biens is to take place, he puts down his name for the chÂteau, but makes a most wofully wry face upon hearing that his own field has been already divided among the paupers of the village. The propagation of communism, then, only excited fears instead of hopes, consternation instead of joy, and tended still more to indispose the country people, and excite their aversion and discontent towards a state of things likely to become so prejudicial to their interests: more than ever, they were disposed to revolt.

In this state was the feeling of the country at large when the general elections came on, accompanied by all the violence of party manoeuvre to support the principles of ultra-republicanism, advocated by the unscrupulous minister of the nation; but all these efforts tended only to indispose it still more, and to call forth, in spite of the desperate opposition made, its sense in favour of respect of property, order, and moderatism of views in the republic, if republic there was to be. As is well known, an immense majority of those men of moderate principles, whom all the ill-judged and hateful efforts of the violent and reckless republicans at the head of affairs had so greatly contributed to form into a decided, self-conscious, and compact party of opponents, was returned to the Assembly. Most of the leading men of the liberal party under the former dynasty, who had stood forward as friends of progressive reform, but not as opponents to the constitutional monarchy principle, were likewise elected, with great majorities, by the suffrages of the people. The country declared its will to be against the views of the principal and stirring influence which emanated from the reckless man who governed the interior affairs of the country in the capital. But it did not forget, at the same time, and it still bears an inveterate grudge to the violent agents of that ultra-republicanism, chiefly concentrated in Paris, who had filled the country with disorder, tumult, terror, and, in some cases, bloodshed, by the atrocious and outrageous means it placed in the hands of a riotous mob to overawe them, and sway the direction of the elections, and by the base manoeuvres employed to attain their ends. It does not forget the despotism of certain commissaries, who, after having their own lists of ultra-democratic candidates, whom they intended to force down the throats of the electors, printed, threatened the printer, who should dare to print any other, with their high displeasure, and caused them to shut up their press. It does not forget the seizure of those papers that proposed moderate candidates, with every attempt to strangle in practice that liberty of the press which was so clamorously claimed in theory. It does not forget the voters' lists torn from the hands of voters by a purposely excited mob. It does not forget the odious manoeuvre by which agents were largely paid and sent about to cry "Vive Henri V." in the streets of towns, in order to induce the belief in a Bourbonist reactionary party, and thus rouse the passions and feelings of the flattered and declamation-intoxicated mob against the moderates, regardless of the consequences—of the animosity and the bloodshed. It does not forget the intimidation, the threat of fire and sword, the opposition by force to the voting of whole villages suspected of moderatism—the collision, the constraint, the conflict, the violence. It does not forget all this, nor also that it owes the outrage, the alarm, and the suffering, the ruin to peace and order, to commerce, to well-being, to fortune, to that central power which turned a legion of demons upon it, in the shape of revolutionary emissaries and agents. It forgets still less the scenes of Limoges, where a mob were turned loose into the polling-house to destroy the votes, drive out the national guards, disarm these defenders of order and right, and form a mob government, to rule and terrorise the town, while Master Commissary looked on, and told the people that it did well, and laughed in his sleeve. It forgets still less the fury of the disappointed upon the result of the elections, their incitements to insurrections, their preachings of armed resistance for the sake of annulling the elections, obtained, it must never be forgotten, by universal suffrage, in face of their culpable manoeuvres: the emissaries again sent down from the clubs, and with an apparent connivance of certain ultra-members of the government, from the charge of which, now more than ever since the conspiracy of the 15th May, they will scarcely be able to acquit themselves: the efforts of these emissaries to make the easily excited and tumultuous lower classes take up arms, and the bloody conflicts in the streets of Rouen: the complicity of the very magistrates appointed by these members of the government—the terror and the bloodshed, and then the cry of the furious ultras that the people had been treacherously assassinated—the conspiracies and incendiary projects of the vanquished at Marseilles, the troubles of Lisle, of Amiens, of Lyons, of Aubusson, of Rhodez, of Toulouse, of Carcassonne—why swell the list of names?—of almost every town in France, all with the same intent of destroying those elections of representatives which the country had proclaimed in the sense of order and of moderatism. It forgets still less the dangers of that same 15th May, when the government was for a few hours overthrown, by the disorderly, the disappointed, the discontented, the violent ultra republicans, the conspirators of Paris,—when some of those, who had been formerly their rulers, were arrested as accomplices, and others still in power can scarcely yet again avoid the accusation and conviction of complicity.

All the other troubles of this distracted country, since the revolution of February, may be passed over—the ruin to commerce, the poverty, misery, and want, the military revolts excited by the same emissaries to cause divisions in the army, as likewise the unhappy troubles of Nismes, where the disturbances took a religions tendency—as a conflict of creeds between Roman Catholics and Protestants, rather than a political or even a social character,—although they still bore evidence of the disorder of the times and the disturbance of the country. The elections, then, contributed more powerfully than ever to the fermentation, the discontent, the mistrust, and the ill-will of the country.

In this state of France, with the feeling of impatient jealousy and irritation against tyranny and despotism expressed by the departments towards the capital, with the evident disunion between the provinces and Paris, what are likely to be the destinies of the Republic hereafter? Again it must be said—who can tell, who foresee, who predict? The Republic has been accepted, and is maintained, from a love of order and the status quo: but there is no enthusiasm, no admiration for the republican form of government throughout the country at large; there is, at most, indifference to any government, whatever it may be, provided it but insure the stability and prosperity of the country. If an opinion may be hazarded, however, it is, that the danger to the present established form of things will not arise so much from the conflict of contending parties in the capital, as from the discontent, disaffection, jealousy, and, perhaps, final outbreak and resistance of the departments. Terrorism has had its day; and it would be difficult, if not impossible, to apply the system once again to the country in its present state. What other means will the violent possess—what coercive measures, if, when parties come to an issue, the wearied and disgusted country should rise to protest against the disorders of Republican Paris? There seem at present to be none. The result of such an outbreak would be inevitable civil war. The strong instance before alluded to, of the determination of the departments to assert a will of their own, was given in a very striking manner in the affair of the 15th May. One of the conspirators got possession of the electric telegraph at the Home Office, and sent down despatches into all the provinces, to inform the country that the Assembly was dissolved, and the new government of the ultra-anarchist party had taken the reins of power. Instead of being awed into submission as heretofore, instead of calmly and resignedly accepting the fait accompli as was their wont, the departments immediately rose to protest against the new revolution of Paris. Before a counter-despatch could be sent down into the provinces, to let them know that the former order of things was restored, the national guards of all the great towns were up and out, with the cry "to arms!" and it was resolved to march upon Paris. It was not only in the towns within a day's journey of the capital that the movement was spontaneously made. In the furthest parts of the country, from the cities of Avignon, Marseilles, Nismes, and all the south of France, the national guards were already on their way towards the capital, before the information that declared the more satisfactory result of the day could be made public. It is more than probable, then, that, should a desperate faction ever seize upon the power, or even should a close conflict of parties further endanger the safety of the country and its tottering welfare, that the provinces would again take up arms against Paris, and that a civil war would be the result.

This is rather a suggestion hazarded, than a prediction made, as to the future fate of the French republic. Whatever that future may be, an uneasy submission on the part of a great anti-republican majority to the active agency of a small republican minority—but, at the same time, a desire of maintaining a government, whatever it may be, if supportable, for tranquillity's sake; a feeling of humiliation and degradation in this utter submission to the will of Paris throughout the country—but, at the same time, an apparent growing determination eventually to resist that will, should it at last prove intolerable—such is the present state of Republican France.