blow, and that in a country which has never sincerely accepted republican institutions, the succession to the throne has nevertheless in fact become elective. It was found that the aristocracy, deprived of the support and favour of the Court, had no station or authority in the land, but was rather an object of jealousy and hatred. It was found that the destruction of the endowed Church had thrown the functions of the clergy into the hands of a poor and illiterate body of peasant priests, and that the influence of faith and morality had been weakened in proportion to the weakness and incapacity of their representatives in the education of the people. Such were the chief elements of the new social life of the French nation. These elements were successively grasped by military genius which wrung from France the blood of generations, and left her at last exhausted and defeated. They were wrought upon by an unscrupulous and mendacious press; by secret combinations hostile to every established government; by the passion of equality, which means the hatred of rank; by visionary schemes opposed to the laws of property: until by these various causes the national condition of France has become that of a pure social democracy, based, not on the principles of the American constitution of society, but on the destruction of the principal institutions which had hitherto subsisted in European communities.

The question we desire to ask ourselves is, whether this striking change has contributed in the last resort to the power, freedom, and prosperity of France? or whether, on the contrary, the tremendous array of calamities which have fallen. upon her, may not be traced to causes inherent in her revolutionary career. In the whole range of modern history, no country has been suddenly brought so near to actual dissolution; no modern armies have ever before been sent wholesale into a Babylonian captivity; no capital of the first rank has seen itself beleaguered by countless enemies, relying for its defence on nothing but the spirit of its own citizens, and exposed to all the horrors of famine and war. Wars and sieges conducted on such a scale remind us of nothing more near to ourselves than the incursions of the barbarians, or the capture of Jerusalem and of Constantinople. Sudden and unexpected as these results are, even by those who have brought them to pass, the causes of them must lie deep. No nation could at once have fallen from such a height to such a depth, if it had not contained within itself some disease, gnawing its most vital parts. No doubt the Imperial Government of the last twenty years bears with justice the immediate responsibility. The

Emperor and his Ministers declared war on a frivolous pretext without any means of carrying it on; they deceived the country, and were themselves deceived, in taking credit for resources which their own folly and prodigality had wasted and consumed; and they left France in her hour of utmost need stripped of every rag of authority and cohesion. But the Imperial Government itself was the offspring of the Revolution. It reecived, not many months ago, a renewed vote of confidence from seven millions of the people. It was the type of a government created by universal suffrage, and irresponsible by virtue of the power which had called it into being. It was, as the late Duc de Broglie said of it with bitterness not long after the coup d'état which had sent him to Mazas, the govern'ment which the lower classes desired and the upper classes 'deserved.' Detestable as we conceive such a government to be, it had a basis in the revolutionary theory; and until its effects were laid bare by the frightful results of its own incapacity and weakness, it seemed so strong that no other form of government could contend with any semblance of success against it. It continued to the last to prostitute authority, to pervert the judgment of the people, to exclude from office every inan of independent character and merit, and to pretend to a strength which it did not possess, for nothing is in truth so weak as absolutism or so timorous as personal power. But nevertheless it was the chosen government of democratic France, and especially of that portion of the French democracy, the peasantry, which, though narrow-minded, ignorant, and easily duped, is incomparably more honest and attached to the cause of peace and order than the democracy of the large towns. This consideration, therefore, brings us one step nearer to the root of the matter. The fatal consequences of the present war, and the revolution attending it, are attributable to the Government of the Empire; but the Government of the Empire was upheld to the last by the votes and confidence of the dominant power in the French nation. Be it from ignorance, be it from corruption, be it from passion, that these evils have sprung, it is to the constituent body, the only true source of power, that we must look for the source of them. It was the pleasure of the French democracy to be governed absolutely. They dreaded and abhorred a more liberal form of government. as tending to anarchy. Experience had taught them the cost of one variety of revolutionary license; they rushed with indiscriminating vehemence into the other extreme; but that too has thrown them into anarchy and completed the circle of misfortune. 6 Un popolo uso a vivere sotto un principe,' says

6

Machiavelli, se per qualche accidente diventa libero, con 'difficoltà mantiene la libertà;' and quoting in the next chapter the example of Rome, he adds, 'Il che nacque da quella cor'ruzione che le parti Mariane avevano messa nel popolo, delle ' quali essendo capo Cesare, potette accecare quella moltitudine 'ch'ella non conobbe il giogo che da se medesima si metteva in 'sul collo.'* The inference we draw from these facts is that the dominant power of the French nation has been misplaced by the revolution, and misdirected by universal suffrage; that the classes invested with the franchise were incapable of discerning their true interests; and that the classes by whom the government of the country might have been safely carried on were paralysed and proscribed by numbers. It may be worth while to trace the operation of these causes in greater

detail.

Before we proceed, however, to this part of our task, we pause for a moment to point out the striking contrast to the institutions and social condition of France which is to be found in the institutions and social condition of her victorious adversary. The counterpart is complete. If France is the representative of the most advanced form of European democracy, Prussia is the representative of monarchy in its most complete modern organisation. The King of Prussia is not a tyrant or an autocrat, for he governs in strict accordance with the laws of his kingdom; but the law itself emanates for the most part from the royal authority. The Royal House of Prussia is the impersonation of the State and the central force of the nation. For two centuries that family has had the good fortune to produce a series of princes, many of them able and brave, some of them great, but all following with exact uniformity the principles of government, of policy, and of war which have raised their kingdom to its present eminence. They have had the talent and good sense to place themselves at the head of the cause of progress, and though by no means liberal' in the sense of a readiness to relinquish any portion of their own regal authority, they have not been slow to adopt every improvement and reform which could increase their own power and ameliorate the condition of the people. In peace and in war they have served their country with extraordinary zeal and energy. In their hands monarchy has never been suffered to degenerate into a thing of empty pageants, luxurious indulgences, or ceremonial forms. It stands erect because it is real. The constitution of the aristocracy in Germany, and espe

Discorsi sopra Livio, i. 16, 17.

cially in Prussia, has never enabled it to exercise a preponderating independent influence in the State. But it has retained, even now, a very strong tradition of the privileges of birth; it stands aloof from the middle classes and the people; and it regards as its sole profession a devoted service of the State and the Crown. The army, more especially, though raised on the broadest principles of national conscription, is officered and led by the upper classes. Large families of noble birth, poor, brave, and loyal, are the natural resource of a military monarchy; and, whatever may be thought of the Junkerdom of Berlin in its politics and its manners, it will not be denied to be an element of strength to the Crown and to the army.

The civil government, which embraces with inconceivable minuteness all the relations of social life, and restrains all freedom of action, is in the hands of a powerful bureaucracy. The representative bodies, more recently introduced in Prussia, have in truth no real control over it. They are not even composed of men capable of carrying it on. On almost all important questions, their wishes and votes have been set aside and trampled on by the Ministers of the Crown with absolute contempt. Of that freedom which consists in the government of the nation by the nation, or in obedience to the will of the nation, there is in Prussia no sign, and not even a pretence. Authority subsists in its severest and most naked form.

But the people, naturally docile and submissive to acts which would produce a change of government in England, a revolution in France, and a pronunciamiento in Spain, are satisfied that in the long run the policy of the government is enlightened and just. They know that the administration of the public finances is inflexibly honest and frugal. They see that the government has by its zeal in the work of education made them the most instructed people in Europe; and they are perhaps unconscious that this education has so moulded their minds and very being that they are trained to habits of obedience, loyalty, and respect, not common in more democratic communities. Even the popular opinions and prevailing sentiments of the day, encouraged by the press, have been skilfully used by the government to promote the aggrandisement of the monarchy by pursuing objects marked out by national am

bition.

There is something of a Spartan character in the institutions of Prussia-the authority of the kings, who are also the commanders of the people-the simplicity and frugality which all ranks have retained in an age of luxury and indulgence-the

crushing weight of public authority which shapes everything to its will and extinguishes the individual in the State-and the harsh unamiable manners formed by a life of disciplinebelong alike to the ancient and the modern military State; and these characteristics were united to a stronger sense of duty, of moral obligation, and of religion, than could be found amongst the wits and philosophers of volatile Athens. The Lacedæmonians were notoriously the least courteous and hospitable of all the Greek Statęs: art, eloquence, and poetry never flourished on their soil. Training and discipline with a view to regimental preparation and rigid obedience were and are alike the objects of the Spartan and the Prussian lawgivers. Oratory, which plays so great a part in the affairs of more popular States, was and is alike unknown and powerless at Lacedæmon and at Berlin, and the policy of each of these capitals is therefore essentially secret and self-contained. This circumstance gives a rare steadiness to their political action, and engenders a hatred of revolutions. The object of the athletic exercises of the other Grecian States, as it is in England, was excellence in games; the exercises of the Prussians, like those of Sparta, are all directed to war. Lastly, it is possible that the land laws of Lacedæmon may have had purposes and results analogous to the great land reform introduced by Baron von Stein.

A State thus constituted on the strictest dynastic principles is the antithesis of France. Accordingly, Prussia has been the most constant and bitter enemy of the French Revolution. She began the contest of the anti-revolutionary war, which led to results so disastrous to Europe, because at that period France was in all the magnificent energy of her new-born hopes of freedom, and monarchical Europe was in a stage of extreme decrepitude. Prussia more than any other State drank that cup of humiliation to the dregs. It was Prussia who put her hand to the Treaty of Basle, which first made over to France the left bank of the Rhine, since so fiercely contested. It was Prussia that accepted Hanover from the dominator of Europe. She expiated that weakness by Jena, and by seven years of excessive suffering from the French occupation. But in those sufferings her regeneration began. The structure of the monarchy and of the army was laid afresh on a broader and stronger basis. When she took the field again in 1813 she commenced a new life. In 1814 her dominions were extended till they touched the frontier of France on its most sensitive and vulnerable point, and she consented to mount guard there, which she has done with effect for more than half a century.