Volume 63 — FALL OF THE THRONE OF THE BARRICADES.

“Deus patiens quia Æternus.”—St Augustin.

Eighteen years ago, when the throne of Charles X. was overturned amidst the universal exultation of the liberal party in this country, we ventured, amidst the general transports, to arraign the policy and condemn the morality of the change. We pleaded strongly, in several articles,^[1] that that great event foreboded nothing but a long series of calamities to France and to Europe; that liberty had been rendered impossible in a country which, casting aside all the bonds of religion and loyalty, had left no other foundation for government but force; and that the external peace of the Continent would be put in imminent peril by an ardent military population, heated by the successful issue of one great revolt, placed in the midst of monarchies in which the feudal institutions and chivalrous feelings were still in ascendency. We doubted the stability of a government founded on the success of one well-organised urban insurrection: we distrusted the fidelity of men who had begun their career by treachery and treason. Nominally the aggressor, we concluded that Charles X. was really on the defensive; he attempted a coup d’état, because government in any other way had become impossible. We were told in reply, that these were antiquated and exploded ideas; that the revolution was necessary to save the liberties of France from destruction; that a new era had opened upon mankind with the fire of the Barricades; that loyalty was no longer required when the interest of mankind to be well governed was generally felt; and that a throne surrounded by republican institutions was the best form of government, and the only one in which the monarchical principle could any longer be tolerated in the enlightened states of modern Europe.

With how much vehemence these principles were maintained by the whole whig and liberal party in Great Britain, need be told to none who recollect the rise of the dynasty of the Barricades in the year 1830. To those who do not, ample evidence of the general delusion, and of the perseverance with which it was combated, will be found in the pages of this Journal for 1831 and 1832. Time has rolled on, and brought its wonted changes on its wings. More quickly than we anticipated, the perilous nature of the convulsion which had proved victorious was demonstrated—more clearly than we ventured to predict, was the necessity of Prince Polignac’s ordinances demonstrated. It soon became apparent that France could be governed only by force.

The government of Louis Philippe was a continual denial of its origin—an incessant effort to crush the spirit which had raised it. The repeated and sanguinary disorders in Paris; the two dreadful insurrections in Lyons; the awful drowning of the revolt of the cloister of St Méry in blood; demonstrated, before two years had elapsed, that the government had felt the necessity of extinguishing the visionary ideas which had been evoked, as the means of elevating itself into power. More than once it stood on the edge of the abyss; and it was saved only by the vigour of the sovereign, and the newly awakened terrors of the holders of property, which prevented them from openly coalescing with the determined republicans, who aimed at overturning all the institutions of society, and realising in the nineteenth century the visions of Robespierre and Babœuf in the eighteenth. In the course of this protracted struggle, the new government felt daily more and more the necessity of resting their authority on force, and detaching it from the anarchical doctrines, amidst the triumphs of which it had taken its rise. Paris was declared in a state of siege; the ordinances of Polignac were reenacted with additional rigour; the military establishment of the country was doubled; its expenditure raised from nine hundred millions to fifteen hundred millions francs; an incessant and persevering war waged with the democratic press; and Paris surrounded by a chain of forts, which effectually prevented any other will from governing France but that of the military who were in possession of their bastions. Such was the result to the cause of freedom in France of the triumph of the Barricades.

But in eighteen years an entirely new generation rises to the active direction of affairs. In 1848, the personal experience, the well-founded fears, the sights of woe which had retained the strength of France round the standards of the Barricades, were forgotten. The fearful contests with anarchy by which the first years of the reign of Louis Philippe had been marked, had passed into the page of history, that is, were become familiar to a tenth part only of the active population. To those who did learn it from this limited source, it was known chiefly from the volumes of M. Louis Blanc, who, in his “Ten years of the reign of Louis Philippe,” painted that monarch in no other light but as one of the most deceitful and sanguinary tyrants who ever disgraced humanity. Thus the lessons of experience were lost to the vast majority of the active citizens. The necessity of keeping at peace, which Louis Philippe so strongly felt, and so energetically asserted, became in the course of years an insupportable restraint upon a people fraught with revolutionary ideas, and heated by the glowing recollections of the Empire. A nation containing six millions of separate landed proprietors,^[2] the great majority of whom were at the plough, and not possessed of six pounds a-year in the world, necessarily chafes against any power which imposes the restraints of order and peace on the appetite for plunder and the lust of conquest. This was the true secret of the fall of the dynasties of the Restoration and the Barricades. They fell because they kept the nation at peace with its neighbours, and at peace with itself,—because they terminated the dream of foreign conquest, and checked the visions of internal utopia; because they did not, like Napoleon, open the career of arms to every man in the country capable of carrying a musket; or, like Robespierre, pursue the supposed advantage of the working classes by the destruction of every interest above them in society. Had either Charles X. or Louis Philippe been foreign conquerors, and the state of Europe had permitted of their waging war with success, they would have lived and died on the throne of France, and left an honoured crown to their successors. There never were monarchs who mowed down the population and wasted the resources of France like Napoleon and Louis XIV.; but as long as they were successful, and kept open the career of elevation to the people, they commanded their universal attachment. It was when they grew unfortunate, and could call them only to discharge the mournful duties of adversity, that they became the objects of universal execration. The revolution has ever been true to its polar star, viz.—worldly success.

In making these observations, we must guard against being misunderstood. We do not assert that the present leaders of the Revolution desire foreign war, or are insincere in the pacific professions which they have put forth in their public proclamations. We have no doubt that “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity,” is what they really desire; and that with England in particular they are sincerely desirous to remain, at present at least, on terms of amity. The early promoters of the Revolution of 1789—Siêyes, Bailly, Mirabeau, and Lafayette—were equally loud and probably sincere in their pacific protestations at the outset of the first convulsion. What we assert is another proposition entirely corroborated by past history, and scarcely less important in its present application—viz., that the members of the existing Revolutionary Government are placed in a false position; that they have been elevated to power by the force of passion, and the spread of principles inconsistent with the existence of society; that if they continue to fan them, they will ruin their country, if they attempt to coerce them, they will be destroyed themselves. This is the constant and dreadful alternative in which a Revolutionary Government is placed, and which has so uniformly led in past history to what is called a departure from the principles of freedom by its successful leaders. It was this which brought Lafayette into such discredit in Paris, that his life was saved only by his fortunate confinement in an Austrian dungeon: it was this which rendered Mirabeau in the end a royalist, and for ever ruined him in popular favour: it was this which made Robespierre strive to restore the sway of natural religion in the infidel metropolis: it was this which gave Napoleon such a horror of the metaphysical “Ideologues,” who, according to him, had ruined France, and rendered him the resolute and unbending opponent of the Revolution. But even Napoleon’s iron arm was unequal to the task of arresting the fiery coursers of democracy: he only succeeded in maintaining internal tranquillity by giving them a foreign direction. He turned them not against the Tuileries, but against the Kremlin; he preserved peace in France only by waging war in Europe. A “Napoleon of Peace” will never succeed in restraining the Revolution.

Observe the pledges with which the Provisional Government are commencing their career. They are, that the state is to provide employment for all who cannot procure it from private individuals; that an ample remuneration is to be secured to labour; that the right of combination to raise wages is to be protected by law; that the House of Peers is to be abolished, as well as all titles of honour, the bearing of which is to be absolutely prohibited; that a noble career to all Frenchmen is to be opened in the army; the national representation is to be placed on the most democratic basis of a National Assembly, elected by nine millions of electors; all burdens on subsistence are to be abolished; unlimited circulation is to be provided for newspapers and the extension of knowledge; but the taxes, in the mean time at least, are to undergo no diminution. These promises and pledges sufficiently demonstrate what interest in the state has now got the ascendency. It is the interest, or rather supposed interest, of labour, in opposition to that of capital—of numbers against property.

The Revolution that has taken place is a communist or socialist triumph; the chiefs who have been installed in power are the leaders of the party who think that the grand evil of civilisation is the encroachment of the profit of capital on the wages of labour, and that the only effectual remedy for them is to be found in the forcible diminution of the former and extension of the latter.

The doctrine of this party in France has long been, that Robespierre perished because he did not venture to pronounce the word, agrarian law. It would be to little purpose to pronounce that word now, when the Republic has got nearly six millions of separate proprietors, most of them not worth six pounds a-year each. There is little but sturdy resistance to be got by attempting to spoliate this immense and indigent body, as they have spoliated the old territorial proprietors. But the capitalists and shopkeepers of towns stand in a different situation. In their hands, since the fall of Napoleon, very considerable wealth has accumulated. The peace and order maintained by the governments of the Restoration and the Barricades, though fatal to themselves, has been eminently favourable to the growth of bourgeois opulence. It is against that opulence that the recent Revolution was directed. The shopkeepers, deluded to their own destruction, began the insurrection: they surrounded and compelled the abandonment of the Tuileries. All successful convulsions are headed, in the first instance at least, by a portion of the higher or middle ranks. But they were soon passed by the rabble who followed their armed columns; and when the tumultuous mob broke into the Chamber of Deputies, fired at the picture of Louis Philippe, and pointed their muskets at the head of the Duchess of Orleans, it was too late to talk of Thiers and Odillon Barrot; the cause of reform was already passed by that of Revolution; and nothing could serve the victorious and highly excited multitude, but the abolition of monarchy, peers, and titles of honour, and the vesting of government in the hands of dreamers on equality, and leaders of Trades’ Unions in France.

Let the National Guard, who brought about the Revolution, and seduced or overcame the loyalty of the troops of the line, explain, if they can, the benefit they are likely to derive from this triumph of Socialism over Bourgeoisie, of labour over capital, of numbers over property. The Revolution was the work of their hands, and they must reap its fruits, as unquestionably they will bear its responsibility. It is of more importance for us in this country to inquire how the promises made by government, and the expectations formed by the people, are to be realised in the present social and political state of France. Already, before the Io Pæans upon the fall of the Orleans dynasty have ceased, the difficulties of the new government in this respect have proclaimed themselves. Columns of ten and fifteen thousand workmen daily wait on the administration to insist on the immediate recognition of the rights of labour: their demands were promptly acceded to by the decree of 3d March, which fixes the hours of labour in Paris at ten hours a-day, and in the provinces at eleven hours. They were formerly eleven hours in Paris and twelve in the provinces. This is quite intelligible: it is reasonable that the Civil Prætorian Guards of the capital should work less than the serfs of the provinces. Cutting off an hour’s labour over a whole country would be deemed a pretty serious matter in “l’industrieuse Angleterre:” but on the other side of the Channel, we suppose, it is a mere bagatelle, important chiefly as showing from what quarter the wind sets. Other prognostics of coming events are already visible. Monster meetings of operatives and workmen in and around Paris continue to be held in the Champs de Mars, to take the interests and rights of labour into consideration: it is probable that they will still further reduce the hours of toil, and proportionately raise its wages. Already the stone-cutters have insisted on a minimum of pay and maximum of work, and got it. Eight hours a-day, and ten sous an hour, is their ultimatum. The journalists early clamoured for the immediate removal of all duties affecting them. They succeeded in shaking off their burdens; other classes will not be slow in following their example. Meanwhile government is burdened, as in the worst days of the first Revolution, with the maintenance of an immense body of citizens with arms in their hands, and very little bread to put into their mouths. How to feed this immense body, with resources continually failing, from the terrors of capital, the flight of the English from Paris, and the diminished expenditure of all the wealthier classes, would, according to the former maxims of government, have been deemed a matter of no small difficulty. But we suppose the regenerators of society have discovered some method of arriving, with railway speed, at public opulence amidst private suffering.

The melancholy progress of the first Revolution has naturally made numbers of persons, not intimately acquainted with its events, apprehensive of the immediate return of the Reign of Terror and the restoration of the guillotine into its terrible and irresistible sovereignty in France. Without disputing that there is much danger in the present excited and disjointed state of the population of that country, there are several reasons which induce us to believe that such an event is not very probable, at least in the first instance, and that it is from a different quarter that the real danger that now threatens France is, in the outset at least, to be apprehended.

In the first place, although the Reign of Terror is over, and few indeed of the actual witnesses are still in existence, yet the recollection of it will never pass away: it has affixed a stain to the cause of revolution which will never be effaced, but which its subsequent leaders are most anxious to be freed from. Its numerous tragic scenes—its frightful atrocity—its heroic suffering, have indelibly sunk into the minds of men. To the end of the world, they will interest and melt every succeeding age. The young will ever find them the most engrossing and attractive theme,—the middle-aged, the most important subject of reflection,—the old, the most delightful means of renewing the emotions of youth. History is never weary of recording its bloody catastrophes,—romance has already arrayed them with the colours of poetry,—the drama will ere long seize upon them as the finest subjects that human events have ever furnished for the awakening of tragic emotion. They will be as immortal in story as the heroes of the Iliad, the woes of the Atrides, the catastrophe of Œdipus, the death of Queen Mary. So strongly have these fascinating tragedies riveted the attention of mankind, that nothing has ever created so powerful a moral barrier against the encroachments of democracy. The royal, like the Christian martyrs, have lighted a fire which, by the grace of God, will never be extinguished. So strongly are the popular leaders in every country impressed with the moral effects of these catastrophes, that their first efforts are always now directed to clear every successive convulsion of their damning influence. Guizot and Lafayette, at the hazard of their lives, in December 1830, saved Prince Polignac and M. Peyronnet from the guillotine; and the first act of the Provisional Government of France in 1848, to their honour be it said, was to proclaim the abolition of the punishment of death for political offences, in order to save, as they intended, M. Guizot himself.

In the next place, the bloodshed and confiscation of the first Revolution have, as subsequent writers have repeatedly demonstrated, so completely extinguished the elements of national resistance in France, that the dangers which threatened its progress and ensanguined its steps no longer exist. It was no easy matter to overturn the monarchy and church of old France. It was interwoven with the noblest, because the most disinterested feelings of our nature,—it touched the chords of religion and loyalty,—it was supported by historic names, and the lustre of ancient descent,—it rested on the strongest and most dignified attachments of modern times. The overthrow of such a fabric, like the destruction of the monarchy of Great Britain at this time, could not be effected but by the shedding of torrents of blood. Despite the irresolution of the king, the defection of the army, the conquest of the capital, and the emigration of the noblesse, accordingly, a most desperate resistance arose in the provinces; and the revolution was consolidated only by the mitrillades of Lyons and Toulon, the noyades of the Loire, the proscriptions of the Convention, the blood of La Vendée. France was not then enslaved by its capital. But now these elements of resistance to the government of the dominant multitude at Paris no longer exist. The nobles have been destroyed and their estates confiscated; the clergy are reduced to humble stipendiaries, not superior in station or influence to village schoolmasters; the corporations of towns are dissolved; the house of peers has degenerated into a body of well-dressed and titled employés. Six millions of separate landed proprietors, without leaders, wealth, information, or influence, have seized upon and now cultivate the soil of France. Power is, over the whole realm, synonymous with office. Every appointment in the kingdom flows from Paris. In these circumstances, how is it possible that resistance to the decrees of the sovereign power, in possession of the armed force of the capital, the treasury, the telegraph, and the post-office, can arise in France elsewhere than in the capital? Civil war, therefore, on an extended scale over the country, is improbable; and the victorious leaders of the Revolution, delivered from immediate apprehension, save in their own metropolis, of domestic danger, have no motive for shocking the feelings of mankind, and endangering their relations with foreign powers, by needless and unnecessary deeds of cruelty. It was during the struggle with the patricians that the proscriptions of Sylla and Marius deluged Italy with blood. After they were destroyed, by mutual slaughter and the denunciations of the Triumvirate, though there was often the greatest possible tyranny and oppression under the emperors, there was none of the wholesale destruction of life which disgraced the republic, when the rival factions fronted each other in yet undiminished strength.

Although, however, for these reasons, we do not anticipate, at least at present, those sanguinary proscriptions which have for ever rendered infamous the first Revolution, yet we fear there is reason to apprehend changes not less destructive in their tendency, misery still more widespread in its effects, destined, perhaps, to terminate at last in bloodshed not less universal. Men have discovered that they are not mere beasts of prey: they cannot live on flesh and blood. But they have learned also that they can live very well on capital and property: and it is against these, in consequence, that the present Revolution will be directed. They will not be openly assailed: direct confiscations of possessions have fallen almost as much into disrepute as the shedding torrents of blood on the scaffold. The thing will be done more covertly, but not the less effectually. They will take a leaf out of the former private lives of the Italians, and the recent public history of Great Britain. We have shown them that, under cover of a cry for the emancipation of slaves, property to the amount of one hundred and twenty millions can be quietly and securely destroyed in the colonies; that, veiled under the disguise of placing the currency on a secure basis, a third can be added to all the debts, and as much taken from the remuneration of every species of industry, throughout the country. These are great discoveries, they are the glory of modern civilisation: they have secured the support of the whole liberal party in Great Britain. The objects of the French Revolutionists are wholly different, but the mode of proceeding will be the same. The stiletto and the poison bowl have gone out of fashion: they are discarded as the rude invention of a barbarous age. The civilised Italians have taught us how to do the thing. Slow and unseen poison is the real secret; there are Lucretia Borgias in the political not less than the physical world. The great thing is to secure the support of the masses by loud professions of philanthropy, and the warmest expressions of an interest in the improvement of mankind; and having roused them to action, and paralysed the defenders of the existing order of things by these means, then to turn the united force of the nation to their own purposes, and the placing of the whole wealth of the state at their disposal. Thus the ends of Revolution are gained without its leaders being disgraced: the substantial advantages of a transfer of property are enjoyed without a moral reaction being raised up against it. Fortunes are made by some, without a direct spoliation of others being perceived: multitudes are involved in misery, but then they do not know to what cause their distresses are owing, nor is any peculiar obloquy brought upon the real authors of the public calamities.

We do not say that the present Provisional Government of France are actuated by these motives, any more than we say that our negro emancipators or bullionists and free-traders meant, in pursuing the system which they have adopted, to occasion the wholesale and ruinous destruction of property which their measures have occasioned. We consider both the one and the other as political fanatics; men inaccessible to reason, insensible to experience; who pursue certain visionary theories of their own, wholly regardless of the devastation they produce in society, or the misery they occasion in whole classes of the state. “Perish the colonies,” said Robespierre, “rather than one iota of principle be abandoned.” That is the essence of political fanaticism; it rages at present with equal violence on both sides of the Channel. The present Provisional Government of France are some of them able and eloquent—all of them, we believe, well-meaning and sincere men. But they set out with discarding the lessons of experience; their principle is an entire negation of all former systems of government. They think a new era has opened in human affairs: that the first Revolution has destroyed the former method of directing mankind, and the present has ushered in the novel one. They see no bounds to the spread of human felicity, by the adoption of a social system different from any which has yet obtained among men. They have adopted the ideas of Robespierre without his blood,—the visions of Rousseau without his profligacy.

The writings of Lamartine and Louis Blanc clearly reveal these principles, particularly the “Histoire des Girondins” of the former, and the “Dix Ans de l’Histoire de Louis Philippe” of the latter. Lamartine says the Girondists fell because they did not, on the 10th August 1792, when the throne was overturned, instantly proclaim a republic, and go frankly and sincerely into the democratic system. If he himself falls, it will not be from a repetition of the error; he has done what they left undone. We shall see the result. Experience will prove whether, by discarding all former institutions, we have cast off at the same time the slough of corruption which has descended to all from our first parents. We shall see whether the effects of the fall can be shaken off by changing the institutions of society; whether the devil cannot find as many agents among the Socialists as the Jacobins; whether he cannot mount on the shoulders of Lamartine and Arago as well as he did on those of Robespierre and Marat. In the meantime, while we are the spectators of this great experiment, we request the attention of our readers to the following interesting particulars regarding the acts of the new government, the professions they have made, the expectations which are formed of them.

One of the most popular journals of the working classes of Paris—that is, the present rulers of France—the Democratie Pacifique, has adopted the following mottoes:—

“The Revolution of 1789 has destroyed the old Regime; that of 1848 should establish the new one.”

“Social reform is the end, as Republic is the means; all the Socialists are Republicans, all the Republicans are Socialists.”^[3]

The methods by which the plans of the Socialists are to be worked out, are in the same journal declared to be as follows:—

“PROGRAMME OF THE PEOPLE.

“A man with a heart,—a man greatly loved by the working classes, has lent his hand to the formation of a programme dictated by the popular will. The ideas on which it rests, treated as utopian yesterday, have no need to be discussed to-day. The last Revolution is an explosion of light which has dissipated the darkness. The Socialist ideas railed at yesterday, accepted to-day, will be realised to-morrow. Its principles are,—

“I. The rights of labour.—It is the duty of the state to furnish employment, and if necessary a minimum of wages, to all the members of society whom private industry does not employ.

“II. House of refuge for industry.

“III. Despotism must be for ever disarmed by the transformation of the army into industrial regiments, (en regiments industriels,) suited alike to the defence of the territory and the execution of the great works of the Republic.

“IV. Public education, equal, gratuitous, and obligatory upon all.

“V. Savings’ banks (caisses d’épargne) which keep capital dead, shall be vivified by labour: the people who produce all riches can afford to be their own bankers.

“VI. A universal reform of law courts, juries every where.

“VII. Absolute freedom of communications of thought.

“VIII. A progressive scale of taxation.

“IX. A progressional tax on machinery employed in industry.

“X. An effectual guarantee for a fair division of profits between the capitalists and the workmen.

“XI. A tax on luxury.

“XII. Universal suffrage.

“XIII. A national assembly.

“XIV. Annual elections by all.

“Vive la Republique!

Gardons nos armes!”^[4]

To carry out these principles, they propose a general centralisation of all undertakings in the hands of government, to be brought under the direct control of a simple majority of universal suffrage electors. In the same journal we find the following proposals:—

“ABSORPTION OF RAILWAYS BY THE STATE.

“Let us reproduce to-day, with the certainty of being heard by the country, the wishes which the Democratie Pacifique has announced every morning since its origin, seventeen years ago.

“I. All railways, roads, canals, and public ways, by which the life of France circulates, to be absorbed by the state.

“II. The state should undertake all stage-coaches, carriers, waggons, and means of conveyance or transport, of every description.

“III. All joint-stock banks should be absorbed by the state—(A l’état les banques confédérées.)

“IV. All insurance companies, mines, and salt-works, to be undertaken by the state.

“V. No more forestalling, accumulating, regrating, or anarchical competition. Feudal industry is pierced to the heart; let us not allow it to raise itself from the dust.”^[5]

Such are the proposals to be found in a single journal which represents the ideas that are now fermenting in the mind of France.

These propositions will probably “donnent à penser,” as the French say, to most of our readers. Some of them will perhaps be of opinion that our lively neighbours are getting on at railway speed in the regeneration of society. We recommend their projects to the consideration of the numerous holders of French railway and other stock, in the British islands. They will doubtless get good round sums for their claims of damages against the French government, when it has absorbed all the joint-stock companies of the country!—the more so when it is recollected, 1st, That the damages will be assessed by juries elected by universal suffrage. 2d, That they will be paid by a government appointed by an assembly elected in the same way. We are not surprised, when such ideas are afloat in the ruling and irresistible workmen of Paris, who have just overturned Louis Philippe, at the head of one hundred thousand men, that the French funds have fallen thirty-five per cent in these few days, and railway and other stock in a still greater proportion. The Paris 3 per cents are now (March 18) at 50; the 5 per cents at 72!

Nor let it be said these ideas are the mere dreams of enthusiasts, which never can be carried into practice by any government. These enthusiasts are now the ruling power in the state; their doctrines are those which will quickly be carried into execution by the liberal and enlightened masses, invested by universal suffrage with supreme dominion in the Republic. Most assuredly they will carry their ideas into execution: the seed which the liberal writers of France have been sowing for the last thirty years, will bring forth its appropriate fruits. What power is to prevent the adoption of these popular and highly lauded “improvements,” after the government of Louis Philippe and Guizot has been overturned by their announcement? These persons stood as the barrier between France and the “social revolution” with which it was menaced: when they were destroyed, all means of resisting it are at an end, and the friends of humanity must trust to prevent its extension to other states, mainly to the reaction arising from its experienced effects in the land of its birth.

Already there appears, not merely in the language of the popular journals, but in the official acts of the Provisional Government, decisive evidence that the socialist ideas are about to be carried into execution by the supreme authority in France. On March 1st, there appeared the following decree of the Provisional Government:—

“The Provisional Government, considering that the revolution made by the people should be made for them:

“That it is time to put an end to the long and iniquitous sufferings of the working classes:

“That the question of labour is one of supreme importance:

“That there can be no higher or more dignified preoccupation of the Republican Government:

“That it becomes France to study ardently, and to solve, a problem which now occupies all the states of Europe:

“That it is indispensable, without a moment’s delay, to guarantee to the people the fruits of their labours:

“The Provisional Government has decreed,—

“That a permanent commission shall be formed, which shall be entitled, ‘The Commission of Government for the Labourers,’ and charged, in a peculiar and especial manner, with their lot.

“To show the importance which government attaches to this commission, it names one of its members, M. Louis Blanc, president of the commission, and for vice-president, another of its members, M. Albret, mechanical workman.

“Workmen are invited to form part of the commission.

“It shall hold its sittings in the palace of the Luxembourg.

“Louis Blanc.

“Armand Marrast.

“Garnier Pages.”^[6]

How is the Provisional Government to find funds for the enormous multitudes who will thus be thrown upon them, or to satisfy the boundless expectations thus formed of them, and which their own acts have done so much to cherish? Already the want of money has been experienced. Nearly all the banks of Paris have failed; the savings’ banks have been virtually confiscated, by the depositors being paid only a tenth in specie, and the Bank of France has suspended cash payments. The government has got into an altercation with a class of the highest importance, under existing circumstances, which is striving to liberate itself from the imposts which are more immediately felt by it. So early as March 2d, the journalists claimed an exemption from the stamp duties on the public journals; and on the government hesitating to comply with their requests, they loudly demand the dismissal of M. Cremieux, the new minister of justice. The Democratie Pacifique of March 2d, observes—

“The greatest danger of our situation is, not that which comes from without, but that which comes from within. The most imminent danger would be the slightest doubt on the intentions of government, the least retrograde step in the presence of events. That disquietude, we are bound to admit, already exists in the minds of many—distrust is the precursor of revolutions.

“The government has had under its eyes the conduct of the people. Let it imitate it. Energy, constant energy, is the only way to do good. The people have proved it. It is by energy alone that the prolongation of struggles is prevented—the effusion of blood arrested—dangerous reactions averted.

“Forward, and Force to power! Such is the double cry of the Republic.

“The Chamber of Deputies and of Peers must not only be interdicted from meeting; like royalty, they must be abolished.

“M. Cremieux, the minister of justice, has forgotten his principles. He is not prepared for the part he has to perform. He blindly yields to old attachments and prejudices. At the moment when the most absolute liberty of the press, the most rapid and ceaseless emission of ideas, is the sole condition of the public safety—at the moment when we are in the midst of a chaos from whence we cannot escape if light does not guide our steps—at that moment M. Cremieux proposes to extinguish it—he proposes this, a retrograde step, to the minister of finance—the reestablishment of the stamps on journals.

“A revolution of yesterday cannot be thus braved.

“These gentlemen wish a republic surrounded by republican institutions.

“The people have not yet laid down their arms.”^[7]

The government, after having made a show of resistance, yielded to their masters. The duties on journals were abolished, and absolute freedom given to the pouring of the rankest political poisons into the mind of France.

It is easy to see, with a government resting on such a basis, where the first practical difficulty will be found. Embarrassment of finance is the rock on which it will inevitably split: the more certain that it has been preceded by a huge deficit created by the former government; the more galling that it will be accompanied by the flight or hoarding of capital from the measures of the present one. Capitalists are universally alarmed over the whole country. A monetary crisis, as is the case with all successful revolutions, and that too of the severest kind, has ensued. M. Gouin’s bank, the same which formerly bore the name of Lafitte, has failed under liabilities to the extent of three millions. Nearly all the other banking establishments of Paris have already followed the example. The payment of all bills was, by government, postponed for three weeks, from February 28: a farther extension of the time of payment for a month after March 20, has been petitioned for by eight hundred of the first bankers and merchants in Paris. This amounts to a declaration of a general public and private insolvency. Overwhelmed by the difficulties of his situation, the first minister of finance has resigned; the second, M. Garnier Pages, has published a financial account, which exhibits so deplorable a state of the finances, that it may almost be said to amount to an admission of national bankruptcy. Despite all the efforts made to uphold them, the French three per cents, on this publication, fell to forty-seven. The terrors of the holders of stock are extreme.

An able eye-witness gives the following account of the state of Paris, amidst this terrible social and financial crisis.—

“I have seen daily and intimately persons of all parties; Legitimatists, Conservateurs, or adherents of the late government—adherents of the Molé Ministry of half-an-hour—adherents of the Barrot Ministry, equally short-lived—friends and intimates of members of the Provisional Government. I can most truly and distinctly affirm, that I saw and heard nothing from any of them but alarm and consternation; mingled with the strongest condemnation of the two conflicting parties whose obstinacy had brought about a collision which every body had feared, though no one’s fears had come within the widest range of the reality. I heard only expressions of the conviction that the present order of things could not last; that, in spite of the heroic efforts, the excellent intentions, and the acknowledged talents of several members of the government, it had undertaken to construct an edifice which must fall and crush them under its ruins; that it was now forced by fear upon promises, and would be forced upon acts utterly inconsistent with the stability of any government whatever. In short, the profoundest anxiety and alarm sit at the heart of the educated classes of France, of whatever party—and, not the least, of those who have undertaken the awful task of ruling her. Of that you may be fully assured.

“English Liberals will perhaps say ‘This we expected; but the people?’ Well, I must affirm that, if by ‘people’ they mean the industrious, quiet working-classes, the real basis of society, the object of the respect and solicitude of all enlightened rulers—if they mean these men, the alarm and consternation are greater among them than in the higher classes, in proportion to the slenderness of the resources they have to fall back upon; in many cases this amounts to a sort of blank despair. The more clear-sighted among them see the terrible chances that await them; they see capital leaving the country, confidence destroyed, and employment suddenly suspended or withdrawn, to an extent never seen before.

“Let me mention a few small but significant facts:—

“My locksmith told me he had always employed four men; he has discharged three. An English pastry-cook, who has constantly employed fifteen journeymen, was about to discharge nearly all. Every body is turning away servants, especially men, as the more expensive. I was told that good carriage-horses had been sold for five hundred francs each. A vast number of houses are becoming tenantless; the removal of the English alone would make a visible change in this respect. And what, think you, are the feelings of all the tribe of water-carriers, washerwomen, and the humble dependents for existence on these houses? Nothing, during the three days, seemed to be more affecting and alarming than the sight of these humblest ministrants to the prime wants of life rushing from door to door, even in the quietest streets, to get their hard labour accomplished in safety. Our porteur d’eau was every morning our earliest informant of the events of the night, and I was struck with the good sense and clearness of his views. ‘Ces messieurs parlent d’égalité,’ he said: ‘est ce qu’ils veulent se faire porteurs d’eau? C’est absurde—ce sont des mensonges.’ (‘These gentlemen talk of equality: will they turn water-carriers? It is absurd—these are lies.’) ‘Ils vont nous ruiner tous.’ (‘They are going to ruin us all.’) These last words I heard frequently repeated by persons of the working classes. A poor commissioner, who, for high pay, and through long détours, conveyed a letter for me on the 23d, came in looking aghast. ‘Nous voilà sans maître.’ (‘Here we are without a master,’) said he. ‘Bon Dieu! qu’est ce que nous allons devenir?’ (‘Good God! what will become of us?’) ‘Un pays sans maître ce n’est plus un pays.’ (‘A country without a master is no longer a country.’) ‘Nous allons retomber dans la barbarie.’ (‘We shall fall back into barbarism.’) This, indeed, was so soon felt by all, that masters were appointed. But has that restored the feeling of reverence for authority, or of confidence in those who wield it, indispensable to civil society?

“I heard with astonishment English people on the road saying, ‘Oh, all is quiet now.’ ‘All is going on very well now.’ From no Frenchman have I heard this superficial view of the case. Paris is indeed quiet enough, but it is the quiet of exhaustion, fear, distrust, and dejection. The absolute silence of the streets at night was awful. But a few nights before the 22d, I had complained of the incessant roll of carriages during this season of balls. From the night of the 26th to the 3d of March, the most retired village could not have been more utterly noiseless. Not a carriage—not a foot-fall—except at intervals the steady and silent step of the patrol of the National Guard, listened for as the sole guarantee for safety. ‘Every man,’ said a grocer, wearing the uniform of the Guard, to me in his shop, ‘must now defend his own. We have no protectors but ourselves; no police, no army.’”—Times, March 8, 1848.

These are sufficiently alarming features in the political and social condition of any country: but they become doubly so, when it is recollected that they coexist with unbounded expectations formed in the labouring masses, in whom supreme power is now both practically and theoretically vested. The Revolution has been the triumph of the workmen over the employers, of the “proletaires” over the “bourgeois,” of labour over capital. How such a triumph is to eventuate with a vehement and indigent population, impelling the government on in the career of revolution, and capital daily leaving the country or hiding itself from the dread of the acts of a government about to be appointed by nine millions of electors, is a question on which it well becomes all the holders of property, in whatever rank, seriously to reflect in this country.

Some idea of the extravagance and universality of their expectations may be formed from the following passage in the description of a still later eye-witness:—

“Paris is to all appearance tranquil; but there is much agitation that does not show itself outwardly. The workmen of all trades are intent on legislation which shall secure more wages for less toil. They beset the Luxembourg with processions, and fill the Chamber of Peers with deputations. Louis Blanc has discovered that to organise labour in a pamphlet and put the theory into practice are two very different things. The walls are covered with the manifestoes of the several branches of occupation; every day sees a new crop; they reveal the existence of dissentions among the workmen themselves, though they are all based on nearly the same principles; the seven-hooped pot is to have ten hoops, and it is to be felony to drink small-beer. The cochers have secured a tariff, with an advance of wages; the tailors are demanding the same; the ‘cheap’ establishments are in despair, for they supply classes that cannot buy at higher prices. An anxious employer placed the difficulty before some of the men; the only answer recorded was the comforting assurance that every body will be able to pay five pounds for his coat ‘as soon as society is regenerated!’ What is to be said to such magnificence of hope? A citoyen coatmaker can only shrug his shoulders and wait for the end. One step has been taken that seems likely to lead to it—the Commission has opened a register of all employments, and all seeking to be employed, in Paris. Not till the stern truth is revealed by figures will the full difficulty be known, and some estimate formed of what a government can not do. All the edicts that can be forced from it by the pressure of the hour will break down under the weight of necessity, as they always have done.

“Parallel with this agitation, which is material, runs another, which is philosophical. The republic is not perfect enough, and some vile distinctions still exist, irritating to the eye of equality. The government is petitioned to abolish all marks of honour for civilians; the names of distinguished citizens can be recorded in a golden book, a livre d’or of the Republic, as the recompense of great services; but no cross or riband is to be worn. Equality devant la mort is also insisted on; the same place in the cemetery and the same bier for all are to render the grave in appearance, as in reality, the great leveller. This proscription of the poor vanities of life and death is made a serious object by some of the active spirits of the time, as if there were any real importance in them.”^[8]—Times, March 13th, 1848.

If, with material resources continually and rapidly diminishing, capital leaving the country, employment failing, bankruptcies general, the expenditure of the opulent at an end, the finances of the State in hopeless embarrassment, the French Government can satisfy these extravagant wants and expectations without plunging in a foreign war, they will achieve what has never yet been accomplished by man.

Who is answerable for this calamitous Revolution, which has thus arrested the internal prosperity of France, involved its finances in apparently hopeless embarrassment, thrown back for probably half a century the progress of real freedom in that country, and perhaps consigned it to a series of internal convulsions, and Europe to the horrors of general war, for a very long period? We answer without hesitation that the responsibility rests with two parties, and two parties only—the King and the National Guard.

The King is most of all to blame, for having engaged in a conflict, and, when victory was within his grasp, allowing it to slip from his hands from want of resolution at the decisive moment. It is too soon after these great and astonishing events to be able to form a decided opinion on the whole details connected with them; but the concurring statements from all parties go to prove that on the first day the troops of the line were perfectly steady; and history will record that the heroic firmness of the Municipal Guard has rivalled all that is most honourable in French history. The military force was immense; not less than eighty thousand men, backed by strong forts, and amply provided with all the muniments of war. Their success on the first day was unbroken; they had carried above a hundred barricades, and were in possession of all the military positions of the capital. But at this moment the indecision of the King ruined every thing. Age seems to have extinguished the vigour for which he was once so celebrated. He shrunk from a contest with the insurgents, paralysed the troops by orders not to fire on the people, and openly receded before the insurgent populace, by abandoning Guizot and the firm policy which he himself had adopted, and striving to conciliate revolution by the mezzo termine of Count Molé, and a more liberal cabinet. It is with retreat in presence of an insurrection, as in the case of an invading army; the first move towards the rear is a certain step to ruin. The moment it was seen that the King was giving way, all was paralysed, because all foresaw to which side the victory would incline. The soldiers threw away their muskets, the officers broke their swords, and the vast array, equal to the army which fought at Austerlitz, was dissolved like a rope of sand. Louis Philippe fell without either the intrepidity of the royal martyr in 1793, or the dignity of the elder house of Bourbon in 1830; and if it be true, as is generally said, that the Queen urged the King to mount on horseback and die “en roi” in front of the Tuileries, and he declined, preferring to escape in disguise to this country, history must record, with shame, that royalty perished in France without the virtues it was entitled to expect in the meanest of its supporters.

The second cause which appears to have occasioned the overthrow of the monarchy in France, is the general, it may be said universal, defection of the National Guard. It had been openly announced that twenty thousand of that body were to line the Champs Elysés in their uniform on occasion of the banquet; it was perfectly known that that banquet was a mere pretext for getting the forces of this Revolution together; and that the intention of the conspirators was to march in a body to the Tuileries after it was over, and compel the King to accede to their demands. When they were called out in the afternoon, they declined to act against the people, and by their treachery occasioned the defection of the troops of the line, and rendered farther resistance hopeless. They expected, by this declaration against the King of their choice, the monarch of the barricades, to secure a larger share in the government for themselves. They went to the Chamber of Deputies, intending to put up the Duchess of Orleans as Regent, and the Count of Paris as King, and to procure a large measure of reform for the constitution. What was the result? Why, that they were speedily supplanted by the rabble who followed in their footsteps, and who, deriding the eloquence of Odillon Barrot, and insensible to the heroism of the Duchess of Orleans, by force and violence expelled the majority of the deputies from their seats, seized on the President’s chair, and, amidst an unparalleled scene of riot and confusion, subverted the Orleans dynasty, proclaimed a Republic, and adjourned to the Hotel de Ville to name a Provisional Government! The account given of this whole revolt by an eye-witness, which has appeared in the Times, is so instructive, that we make no apology for transferring it to our columns:—

“On the afternoon of Wednesday, Feb. 23, Paris was greatly agitated, but no severe fighting had taken place; a few barricades had been raised and retaken by the troops; the plans of the government were complete—Marshal Bugeaud had been named to the command of the forces in Paris, and M. Guizot informed the King that he was confident that the Executive Government could put down the insurrection. The royal answer was—a dismissal. The King dismissed M. Guizot, and dissolved the Cabinet at that momentous instant, when all the energies of united power were required to fight in the streets a battle which it had itself deliberately provoked.

“Still, however, the mischief might yet have been repaired if vigorous measures had been taken. But, from that hour, nothing but the most extraordinary blunders and pusillanimity marked the conduct of the Court. Count Molé was sent for, and the evening of Wednesday passed in attempts, or no attempts, we hardly know which, on his part to form a semi-Liberal Cabinet. In the city, the fall of the Guizot ministry was hailed with acclamation and illumination, as the first sign of popular victory; and at that same critical juncture the fatal discharge of musketry took place opposite the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which stained the pavement with blood, and inflamed the people to a revolutionary pitch. The night was spent in preparation for a more terrible morrow; but as yet the army had neither fraternised nor laid down its weapons. It was, on the contrary, for the most part prepared to act; but a circumstance occurred at Court which totally paralysed its resistance.

“After Count Molé’s failure, the King sent for M. Thiers. That gentleman may be said to have actually formed a Cabinet in conjunction with M. Odillon Barrot and M. Duvergier de Hauranne, for they instantly proceeded to the discharge of the highest possible duty which could devolve on ministerial responsibility. The one act of their government was the publication of that inconceivable proclamation, stating that no further resistance should be made, and the promulgation of orders to the officers commanding regiments to withdraw them. This was of course the capitulation of the Monarchy. Marshal Bugeaud—who had the command of the troops, had now completed his preparations for the general attack of the barricades, and was confident of success—protested most energetically against this extraordinary order, and said that if it was acted on all was lost. The King’s then ministers, M. Thiers and M. Barrot, insisted; the King took their advice, and Marshal Bugeaud resigned the command of the troops, observing that it was useless for him to retain it if nothing was to be done. General Lamoricière was therefore named to the command of Paris, and M. Thiers and his friends proceeded to effect their pacific arrangements. The effects of their orders were immediately perceptible, although the declaration of their names was certainly not followed by the consequences they had anticipated. The officers of the army, indignant at so unexpected a termination of their duties, sheathed their swords; the men allowed themselves to be disarmed by the mob, whom they had been ordered not to resist, and the people, encountering no serious opposition except from the Municipal Guard, which was cut to pieces, rushed on to the conquest of the Palais-Royal and the Tuileries. To sum up this narrative in two words—the dismissal of the Guizot government rendered it impossible for the Executive Government to act effectually; the subsequent advice of M. Thiers and the resignation of Marshal Bugeaud, rendered it impossible to act at all. If this be, as we have every reason to believe it is, a correct narrative of these transactions, we are not surprised that M. Thiers and his colleagues should not have made themselves conspicuous in the subsequent passage of this Revolution.

“The mob of Paris, at no hour of the day, (the 24th,) was formidable to ten thousand men, much less to a hundred thousand, or at least eighty thousand. On the Thursday (24th) public opinion had abandoned the émeute. The National Guard would now have done any thing to reproduce order, but they had no time; there was no opportunity to reunite themselves; besides which, they wanted courage and support, and did not even dream of the extreme to which things might be pushed. There never was, at any time, any acharnement among the people; the troops were every where well received; not a hostile head looked from a window. It was hoped that something might be done by a demonstration of public opinion, but nothing more. The émeutiers the first and second day simply took advantage of the absence of the National Guard. They were all the time ill looked upon by the real people of Paris, but they were permitted to go on as a means of action on the court and government. The accident, or rather the gross and infamous blunder, committed before the Bureau des Affaires Etrangères (of which the accounts published are erroneous), produced a violent irritation, which was ably worked upon by the Republican committee, who were all along on the watch; but this irritation, which certainly changed the character of the contest, gave no arms to the people; and although it increased their numbers, they were never, even numerically, formidable, as I have said, to ten thousand men. As for the barricades, there was not one that was ever defended except against some weak patrol, and then, after a little popping, it was always abandoned. Literally, there was no fighting; there was skirmishing on the part of the brave Municipals—the only force that acted—and I presume it acted on orders which did not emanate from the chief military authority, but had some separate and general instructions of its own. Literally, I repeat, there was no fighting. How could there be? There were no arms; that is, not a musket to a hundred men, till eleven or twelve o-clock in the day, when the troops, without orders—except “not to fire,” or act against the people—became, in several parts of Paris, mixed up and united with them.”—Times, March 8 and 14, 1848.

Here, then, is the whole affair clearly revealed. It was the timidity of Government, and the defection of the National Guard, which ruined every thing; which paralysed the troops of the line, encouraged the insurgents, left the brave Municipal Guards to their fate, and caused the surrender of the Tuileries. And what has been the result of this shameful treachery on the part of the sworn defenders of order—this “civic” prætorian guard of France? Nothing but this, that they have destroyed the monarchy, ruined industry, banished capital, rendered freedom hopeless, and made bankrupt the state! Such are the effects of armed men forgetting the first of social duties, that of fidelity to their oaths. How soon were these treacherous National Guards passed in the career of revolution by the infuriated rabble! How soon were Odillon Barrot and Thiers supplanted by Lamartine and Arago! How rapidly were the Duchess of Orleans and the Count of Paris expelled at the point of the bayonet from the Chamber of Deputies—the cry for reform drowned in that of revolution! How many of the twenty thousand National Guards, who by their treachery brought about the Revolution, will be solvent at the end of two months? Not a tenth of their number. They will perish deservedly and ignobly; ruined in their fortunes, beggared in their families, despised by their compatriots, execrated by Europe! That they may anticipate what history will say of their conduct, let them listen to the verdict which it has pronounced on the National Guard which, on a similar crisis, 10th August 1792, betrayed Louis XVI., as pronounced by an authority whom they will not suspect of leaning to the Royalist side—M. Lamartine.

“The National Guard, on the 10th August, returned humiliated and in consternation to their shops and counting-houses; they had justly lost the lead of the people. Thenceforth it could no longer aspire but to be the parade force of the Revolution, compelled to assist at all its acts, at all its fêtes, at all its crimes; a vain living decoration of all the mechanists of the Revolution.”^[9]

Of which revolution is Lamartine now speaking; of that of 10th August 1792, or of 24th February 1848? Beyond all doubt history will pass a severer judgment on the treachery which overthrew Louis Philippe than on that which consummated the destruction of Louis XVI.: for the former had the example of the latter for its guide; they knew how soon the massacre of September followed the triumph of August, and what incalculable calamities the defection of their predecessors in the Place Carousel brought upon their country and Europe.

What benefit have the working classes derived, or are they likely to derive, from this deplorable convulsion? Great ones they doubtless expect, as it has issued in a triumph of labour over capital. But what has it realised? We shall mention one or two particulars to illustrate the benefits hitherto reaped by this class from its victory.

The savings’ banks of France had prospered immensely under the firm and pacific government of Louis Philippe. The following account of them is derived from official sources.

“The state of the savings’ banks in France at the time of the Revolution indicated an extraordinary degree of confidence in the stability of the late government. In 1834 there were only seventy savings’ banks in France, and the amount of deposits on hand was 34,000,000 francs. In 1839 there were four hundred and four banks, and the deposits had increased to 171,000,000 francs; in 1848, at the moment of the Revolution, the deposits had risen to 355,000,000 francs, or ten times the amount deposited fourteen years before. In 1839 the average value of each deposit was 550 francs, which is probably increased to 600 francs average at the present time. The partial suspension of payment by these institutions must affect at least half a million of persons of the most industrious and economical part of the population, chiefly belonging to the towns, and they are deprived of a large portion of their savings at the very moment they most need them.”—Times, March 14, 1848.

Now, these savings’ banks, holding deposits to the amount of about £14,000,000 at the commencement of the Revolution, and which had increased tenfold during Louis Philippe’s reign, have to all practical purposes been rendered bankrupt. Unable to stand the dreadful run upon them after the outbreak, or to realise the amount of their deposits by the sale of their funded property, in consequence of its prodigious fall, they had no resource but to suspend payment. By a decree of Government, the holders of deposits in the savings’ banks are to receive only a tenth in cash, the remainder being payable six months hence, in a paper now practically worth nothing. By this single result of the Revolution, above five hundred thousand of the most meritorious and hard-working of the operatives of France have been in effect deprived of the savings of a whole lifetime.

Nor is the condition of the labouring population in any degree more favoured. In the Times correspondent from Paris of March 14, we find the following account of their present condition:—

“The financial question, the state of trade and commerce, and the task of providing work and food for the people, with which the government has charged itself, are additional motives for seriousness, however. The credit of more than one banking-house is to-day said to be tottering. One firm, it is openly mentioned, has resolved to stop payment to-morrow. Trade is very bad. Work will soon become scarce, and distress and outcry must be expected; and with the knowledge of all these facts, and with the determination to do every thing possible for the relief of the working classes, possessed by the Provisional Government, this source of uneasiness is menacing to-day. I wish a more cheerful view of the situation of affairs were more general than it is, for it might check the departure of rich natives and foreigners from the capital, who continue to retire from it in alarming numbers, and, obviously, with no view to return, for we hear of sales of carriages and horses, for a fifth part of the value they bore three weeks since. Twelve thousand servants are said to be already discharged in Paris, and many houses or hotels in the fashionable quarters have become literally devoid of occupants.”—Times, 14th March 1848.

That such a state of things must in the end terminate in domestic or foreign war must be evident to all who have looked even on the surface of past events. The causes which at present uphold, and must ere long destroy the Republican Government in France, are thus ably stated by the Paris correspondent of the same well-informed journal:—

“The Provisional Government continues to exist at the moment only from two causes. The first is, that all respectable persons hasten to its support under the influence of fear. The other day every body expected to be robbed and murdered: as the Provisional Government showed a strong desire to preserve order, all those individuals, still surprised to find themselves unplundered and unassassinated, attributed the miracle to the government, and ran to its support in self-defence. The adhesions have been readier and more numerous many times over than in 1830. The second cause which gives a short reprieve to the government is, that it humours the ferocious monster that made it,—and which is ready at any moment to overturn it as it set it up,—by the most absurd indulgences, by still more fatal promises for the future. The same set of ruffians (heroes) who forced the Chamber, and who thrust the Provisional Government on the deputies, are still there to invade the Hotel de Ville, and substitute another idol for Lamartine & Co. Still I believe they will not do so just yet; perhaps we may get on till the constitutional or National Assembly meets, but I doubt it. But then, even then,—what is to take place? Faction, clubs, war to the knife. The French are precisely the same men they were in ‘89—they are not changed in the least. Classes have been modified by wealth, commerce, prosperity, &c.; but these are the quiet classes, who will be swallowed up in the course of the next five years. At the present moment the working, or the soi-disant working classes, who are literally the sovereign power, are looked upon with fear, disgust, and abhorrence by every man in France of a superior condition, including the National Guard; and they are all speculating how to get quit of them; while, on the other hand, Louis Blanc is keeping them quiet by preaching Utopianism. He is doing so, honestly and enthusiastically, it is said; and certain it is, that a great mass of the people is flattered and soothed by the idea of converting work into an amusement, of obtaining perpetual easy employment by the state, and a pension at fifty-five years of age. This pause, however, does not deceive the commerce, the capital, the education of France, and, as I said, the universal consideration is how to throw off the many-headed tyrant. The plan of doing so, most consonant with the French character, is war. The National Guard is convinced they must shortly fight these men themselves, or send them to fight the foreigner; the latter is the expedient that will be hit upon; and unfortunately the state of Europe incites them to interfere in the concerns of others, from whom they will receive invitations which, in the condition of men’s minds in this country, it will be impossible for any government to reject. Besides which, even Frenchmen of the best order are, on questions of national glory or honour, not to be relied on for a moment; the best of them may be carried away by a word, a paragraph, a rumour, and all rave ‘Frontier of the Rhine,’ ‘Waterloo,’ and a thousand other follies, which, however sad, may be excused in the present state of their neighbours, though not for that reason the less to be lamented. In all international questions whatever, the characteristics of the French are arrogance, and susceptibility of so extreme a nature, that no body of Frenchmen can be dealt with by foreigners. A sovereign and a minister or two in cold blood, and with all the weight of undivided responsibility upon them, are difficult enough to manage even by the ablest and most impartial of negotiators; but the masses must always be intractable.

“I give the present Provisional Government immense credit for their efficient exertions, and I have considerable reliance on the good intentions of the majority of them; but they will not last; and, above all, whether they last or not, they must obey and not pretend to guide. Lamartine, by his genius, has now and then gained a point; but he, as well as the rest, have been rather the organs of the sovereign of the day than his directors and guides.”—Times, March 13, 1848.

It is not surprising that views of this description should be entertained by all well-informed persons on the spot in France, for the new “National Assembly,” to whom the formation of a constitution is to be intrusted in that country, is to be composed in such a way, as renders the direct or indirect spoliation of property a matter of almost certainty. The following is the decree of the Provisional Government on the subject:—

“French Republic.

“Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.

“The Provisional Government of the Republic, wishing to resign, as soon as possible, into the hands of the Definitive Government the powers it exercises in the interest and by the command of the people,

“Decrees,

“Article 1.—The electoral assemblies are convoked in each district for the 9th of April next, to elect the representatives of the people in the National Assembly, which is to frame the constitution.

“Article 2.—The election shall have the population for its basis.

“Article 3.—The total number of the representatives of the people shall be 900, including those of Algeria and the French colonies.

“Article 4.—They shall be apportioned by the deputies in the proportion indicated in the annexed table.

“Article 5.—The suffrage shall be direct and universal.

“Article 6.—All Frenchmen, 21 years of age, having resided in the district during six months, and not judicially deprived of or suspended in the exercise of their civic rights, are electors.

“Article 7.—All Frenchmen, 25 years of age, and not judicially deprived of or suspended in the exercise of their civic rights, are eligible.

“Article 8.—The ballot shall be secret.

“Article 9.—All the electors shall vote in the chief town of their district, by ballot. Each bulletin shall contain as many names as there shall be representatives to elect in the department.

“No man can be named a representative of the people unless he obtain 2,000 suffrages.

“Article 10.—Every representative of the people shall receive an indemnity of 25f. per day during the session.”

Here is a tolerably democratic constitution, which will probably excite some little disquietude in the breasts of the holders of French stock and railway shares. Universal suffrage—a single assembly of nine hundred members, each of whom is to be paid a pound a-day during the session. To make the experiment still more perilous, the minister of public instruction to the Provisional Government has issued a circular to the ministers of instruction throughout the country, in which he enjoins them to recommend to the people “to avoid the representatives who enjoy the advantages of education or the gifts of fortune.”^[10] This circular excited, as well it might, such a panic in Paris, that the other members of the Provisional Government were obliged to disown it. But that only makes matters worse: it shows what the Provisional Government really meant, and how completely they have already come to stand on the verge of civil war. The projected decree for levelling the National Guard, by distributing the companies of voltigeurs and chasseurs (the élite) through the whole mass, has already produced an address by their battalion, in uniform, to the Provisional Government, which was received at the Hotel de Ville by an immense crowd with cries of “A bas les Aristocrats! on ne passe pas!” It is no wonder the National Guard are at length alarmed. The aristocracies of knowledge and property are to be alike discarded! Ignorance and a sympathy with the most indigent class are to be the great recommendations to the electors! This is certainly making root-and-branch work; it is Jack Cade alive again. Paris, it is expected, will return for its representatives

11 of the Provisional Government,

5 Socialists,

18 Operatives,

34

Truly the National Guard will soon reap the whirlwind; we are not surprised the French funds have undergone so prodigious a fall. The holders of Spanish bonds and American States’ debts know how universal suffrage assemblies settle with their state-creditors. Sidney Smith has told the world something on the subject.

The “pressure from without” on the Provisional Government becomes every day more severe and alarming as time rolls on: wages cease, stock falls in value, savings’ banks suspend payment, and all means of relief, save such as may be extorted from the fears of the government, disappear. The following is a late account of the state of matters in this important respect, from the French metropolis:—

“France, crowded, impoverished, indebted, and straitened at all points, sees an opening in the exercise of a sovereign people’s will. It gets a glimpse of light and life through the Hotel de Ville. Hence this desperate competition for the national resources; and hence, we grieve to add, this wasteful and improvident distribution.

“These deputations are a congenital evil. They began from the very moment the Provisional Government was proclaimed in the Chamber of Deputies. Its progress thence from the Hotel de Ville was a deputation. The members immediately began to thunder at the doors and clamour for admittance. A club orator has since boasted that, had it not been for this importunity, nothing would have been done—that not a step has been taken without external impulse—and that the people had to wait two hours, on that wonderful Thursday, before the Provisional Government would announce a republic. Since that moment the deputations may be said never to have ceased in Paris. For the first week they did not affect a distinctive character, but came as accident had thrown them together—ten thousand from this quarter, and twenty thousand from that; sometimes the people, and sometimes the National Guard, or a medley of all sorts. In those days they were armed. Lamartine had to turn out six times a-day, make gestures half an hour for a hearing, and then spend his brilliant eloquence on a field of bayonets and blouses. When the poet had sunk from sheer exhaustion, the indefatigable deputation adjourned to the Ministry of the Interior, and drew forth M. Ledru Rollin, who had not learned his way about the apartments, or the names of the officials, before he was required to promulgate, off-hand, a complete system for the internal administration of France. It is possible that his first thoughts might have been as good as his second on this subject; but the demand was nevertheless premature. The stream of deputation has since become less turbid, violent, and full; but it has been quite continuous, and, to all appearance, Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis œvum.

“We believe there is not a single branch of employment or of idleness in Paris, that has not marched en masse to the Hotel de Ville to demand more wages, less work, certainty of employment, and a release from all the rules and restrictions which the experience of their masters had found to be necessary. It is unwise to damp the expectations of five thousand armed men. In some cases, therefore, the government capitulated on rather hard terms. By and by it adopted what we really think the best possible alternative. It requested the trades to nominate their several deputies, and set the operative parliament to adjust all its rival pretensions at the Luxembourg. Then there came deputations of women, of students, of pawnbrokers’ tickets, of bankers, of bread-eaters, of bread-makers, of cabmen, of ’bussmen, of sailors, of porters, of every thing that had, or had not, an office and a name. France, of course, has had the precedence, having, in a manner, the first start; but the nations of the earth are beginning to find room in the endless procession. All the world will run into it in time. The vast column is just beginning to form in Chinese Tartary, and is slowly debouching round the Caspian Sea. Already we see a hundred European sections. They follow in one another’s trail. An Anacharsis Clootz is waiting to receive them at the barriers, and marshal them to the Hotel de Ville.”—Times, March 15, 1848.

This state of matters is certainly abundantly formidable to France and to Europe. A great experiment is making as to the practicability of the working-classes governing themselves and the rest of the state, without the aid of property or education. France has become a huge trades-union, the committee of which forms the Provisional Government, and the decrees of which compose the foundation of the future government of the republic. Such an experiment is certainly new in human affairs. No previous example of it is to be found, at least, in the old world; for it will hardly be said that the republic of 1793, steeped in blood, engrossed in war, ruled with a rod of iron by the Committee of Public Salvation, is a precedent to which the present regeneration of society will refer, in support of the principles they are now reducing to practice. We fear its state has been not less justly than graphically described by one of our most distinguished correspondents, who says—“They are sitting as at a pantomime; every thing is grand and glorious; France is regenerated, and all is flourish of trumpets. Meanwhile France is utterly insane—a vast lunatic asylum without its doctors.”

The present state of Paris, (March 21,) and the germs of social conflict which are beginning to emerge from amidst the triumph of the Socialists, may be judged of from the following extracts of the correspondent of the Morning Chronicle, dated Paris, 18th March:—

“Paris, Friday Evening.—There has been another day of great excitement and alarm in Paris. Upwards of thirty thousand of the working classes congregated in the Champs Elysés, and went in procession to the Hotel de Ville to assure the Government that it might depend upon their assistance against any attempt that might be made to coerce it, from whatever quarter it came. I need hardly inform you that this formidable demonstration is intended as a contre coup to the protest presented by the National Guards yesterday, against M. Ledru Rollin’s decree dissolving the grenadier and light companies of the National Guards. It is not the least alarming feature in this affair, that it exhibits an amount of discipline among the working classes, and a promptitude of execution, which are but too sure indications both of the power and the readiness of the leaders of the movement to do mischief. It was only yesterday that the demonstration took place which displeased the masses; yet, in one short night, the order goes forth, the arrangements are made, and before ordinary mortals are out of their beds, thirty thousand of the working classes are marshalled under their leaders, and on their march to make a demonstration of their force, in presence of the executive government—a demonstration which, on the present occasion, to be sure, is favourable to the Government, but which to-morrow may be against it. Who have the orders proceeded from that drew together these masses? How were they brought together? The affair is involved in mystery, but there is enough in it to show an amount of organisation for which the public was not prepared; and which ought to show all those within its operation that they are sitting upon a barrel of gunpowder. The fact is—and there is no denying or concealing it—Paris is in the possession of the clubs, who rule not only it, but the ostensible government. The National Guards, so powerful only a week ago, are now impotent whether for good or evil. “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” The National Guards have quarrelled. The Chasseurs look with jealousy on the compagnies d’élite—the compagnies d’élite will not fraternise with the Chasseurs. The eighty-four thousand men, who formed the National Guards before the 24th of February, look with contempt on the one hundred and fifty thousand new men thrust into their ranks by M. Ledru Rollin, for election purposes, and call them canaille. The new levies feel that they cannot compete in wealth with the good company in which they so unexpectedly find themselves, and they call the old guards aristocrats. Add to this the discontent of the grenadier and light companies at being deprived of their distinctive associations and dress, the displeasure of the old officers, who are about to be deprived of their epaulettes by their new and democratic associates, and the intriguing of the would-be officers to secure a majority of suffrages in their own favour, and you may arrive at a judgment of the slight chance there is of the National Guards of the present day uniting for any one purpose or object. The result of this is obvious. In case of an outbreak, the National Guards, who were so useful in re-establishing order on the two days after the abdication of Louis Philippe, could no longer be depended on. Paris would be in the possession of the mob, and that mob is under the direction of leaders composed of the worst and the most unscrupulous of demagogues.”

The same correspondent adds:—

“The financial and commercial crisis which has created such ravages here for the last week is rapidly extending. I have already given you a distressing list of private bankers who have been obliged to suspend payment. Another bank, though not one of any great name, was spoken of yesterday as being on the eve of bankruptcy; but on inquiry, I find that the bank is still open this morning, although it is doubtful if it will continue so to the end of the day. I abstain from mentioning the name. The commercial world is just in as deep distress as the financial world. Every branch of trade is paralysed. It is useless to attempt to give particular names or even trades. I shall, therefore, only mention, that in one branch of trade, which is generally considered one of the richest in France, namely, the metal trade, there is an almost total suspension of payments. It is not that the traders have not property, but that they cannot turn it into cash. They have acceptances to meet, and they have acceptances in hand, but they cannot pay what is due by them, for they cannot get what others owe. In short, trade is paralysed, for the medium by which it is ordinarily carried on has disappeared. In other trades precisely the same circumstances occur; but I only mention this one trade as showing the position of all others. How long is this to last? No one can say; but one thing certain is, that no symptom of amelioration has hitherto shown itself.”—Morning Chronicle, March 20.

As the experiment now making in France is new, and in the highest degree important, so it is to the last degree to be wished that it may go on undisturbed. The other powers of Europe cannot be too much on their guard against it; but no armed intervention should be attempted, if France retains the pacific attitude she has hitherto held in regard to other states. The republicans of that country have never ceased to declare that the first Revolution terminated in internal bloodshed, military despotism, and foreign subjugation, because it was not let alone—because the Girondists plunged it into war, in order to provide a vent for the ardent passions and vehement aspirations of the unemployed multitudes in that country. Lamartine admits, in his celebrated circular, that in 1792 “war was a necessity to France.” He disclaims, as every man of the least knowledge on the subject must do, the idea that it was provoked by the European powers, who, it is historically known, were drawn into it when wholly unprepared, and as unwillingly as a conscientious father of a family is forced into a duel. Lamartine says the same necessity no longer exists—that the world has become pacific, and that internal regeneration, not foreign conquest, is the end of this revolution. We hope it is so. We are sure it is ardently desired in this country that pacific relations should not be disturbed with the great republic, provided she keeps within her own territory, and does not seek to assuage her thirst at foreign fountains. By all means let the long wished-for experiment be made. Let it be seen how society can get on without the direction of property and knowledge. Let it be seen into what sort of state the doctrines of the Socialists and St Simonians, the dictates of the trades-unions, the clamour of the working masses, will speedily reduce society. Theirs be the glory and the honour if the experiment succeeds—theirs the disgrace and the obloquy if it fails. Let all other nations stand aloof, and witness the great experiment—“a clear stage and no favour” be the universal maxim. But let every other people abstain from imitating the example, till it is seen how the experiment has succeeded in the great parent republic. It will be time enough to follow its footsteps when experience has proved it is conducive to human happiness and social stability.

But while, as ardently as any Socialist in existence, we deprecate the commencement of hostilities by any European power, and earnestly desire to see the great social experiment now making in France brought to a pacific issue, in order that its practicability and expedience may for ever be determined among men, yet it is evident that things may take a different issue in that country. It is possible—though God forbid we should say it is probable—that the great republic may, from internal suffering, be driven to foreign aggression. This, on Lamartine’s own admission, has happened once: it may happen twice. France has four hundred thousand regular troops under arms; and every man capable of bearing a musket is to be forthwith enrolled in the National Guard. Twenty-five thousand of that body have already been taken into regular and permanent pay, at thirty sous, or about fifteenpence, a-day, and sent to the frontier. It is impossible to say how soon this immense and excited mass, with arms in their hands, and little food in their stomachs, may drive the government, as in 1792 they did that of the Girondists, on Lamartine’s admission, into foreign warfare. It behoves Europe to be on its guard. Fortunately the course which its governments should pursue in such an event lies clear and open. They have only to resume the Treaty of Chaumont, concluded in 1813, to curb the ambition of the great military republic of which Napoleon was the head. Let that treaty be secretly but immediately renewed as a purely defensive league. Let no one think of attacking France; but the moment that France invades any other power, let the four great powers forthwith bring a hundred and fifty thousand each into the field. Let not the wretched mistake be again committed, of the others looking tamely on when one is assailed—“et dum singuli pugnant, universi vincuntur.”^[11] The moment the French cross the Rhine or the Alps, the states of Europe must stand side by side as they did at Leipsic and Waterloo, if they would avoid another long period of oppression by the conquering republicans.

Nearly sixty years have elapsed since Mr Burke observed—“The age of chivalry is gone; that of sophists, economists, and calculators has succeeded, and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever. Never more shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex—that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life—the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiments—is gone. It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage while it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half of its evil, by losing all its grossness.”^[12] What a commentary on these well-known and long-admired words have recent events afforded! It is indeed gone, the loyalty to rank and sex—the proud submission, the dignified obedience, the subordination of the heart, which formerly characterised and adorned the states of modern Europe. With more courage than the German Empress, the Duchess of Orleans fronted the revolutionary mob in the Chamber of Deputies; but no swords leapt from their scabbards in the Chamber of Deputies when her noble appeal was made to the loyalty of France—no generous hearts found vent in the words, “Moriamur pro rege nostro, Maria Theresa!” It could no longer be said—

“Fair Austria spread her mournful charms—

The Queen, the beauty, roused the world to arms.”

The infuriated rabble pointed their muskets at the royal heroine, and the few loyal members of the assembly were glad to purchase her safety by removing her from the disgraceful scene. Not a shot was thereafter fired; not a show even of resistance to the plebeian usurpation was made. An army of four hundred thousand men, five hundred thousand National Guards, thirty-four millions of men, in a moment forgot their loyalty, broke their oaths, and surrendered their country to the worst of tyrannies, the tyranny of a multitude of tyrants.

“The unbought grace of life,” says Mr Burke, “the cheap defence of nations, is at an end.” What a commentary has the triumph of the Barricades, the government of Louis Philippe, afforded on these words! M. Garnier Pages, in his Financial Report, has unfolded the state of the French finances, the confusion and disastrous state of which he is fain to ascribe to the prodigal expenditure and unbounded corruption of Louis Philippe. He tells us, and we doubt not with truth, that during the seventeen years of his government, the expenditure has been raised from 900,000,000 francs, (£36,000,000,) to 1700,000,000 francs, (£68,000,000;) that the debt has been increased during that period by £64,000,000; and that the nation was running, under his direction, headlong into the gulf of national bankruptcy. He observes, with a sigh, how moderate in comparison, how cheap in expenditure, and pacific in conduct, was the government of Charles X., which never brought its expenditure up to £40,000,000. It is all true—it is what we predicted eighteen years ago would be the inevitable result of a democratic revolt; it is the consummation we invariably predicted of the transports following the fall of Charles X. The republicans, now so loud in reprobation of the expenditure of the Citizen King, forget that his throne was of their own making; that he was a successful democratic usurper; that his power was established to the sound of the shouts of the republicans in all Europe, amidst the smoke of the Barricades. A usurping government is necessarily and invariably more costly than a legitimate one; because, having lost the loyalty of the heart, it has no foundation to rest on, but the terrors of the senses, or the seductions of interest. It was for precisely the same reason that William III. in ten years raised the expenditure of Great Britain from £1,800,000 a year, to £6,000,000; and that, in the first twenty years of the English government subsequent to the Revolution, the national debt had increased from £600,000 to £54,000,000. When the moral and cheap bond of loyalty is broken, government has no resource but an appeal to the passions or interests of the people. The Convention tried an appeal to their republican passions, and they brought on the Reign of Terror. Napoleon tried an appeal to their military passions, and he brought on the subjugation of France by Europe. Louis Philippe, as the only remaining resource, appealed to their selfish interests, and he induced the revolution of 1848. Mankind cannot escape from the gentle influence of moral obligations, but to fall under the reaction of conquest, the debasement of corruption, or the government of force.

But all these governments, say the republicans, fell, because they departed from the principles of the Revolution, and because they became corrupted by power as soon as they had tasted its sweets. But even supposing this were true,—supposing that Mirabeau, Danton, Robespierre, Napoleon, and Louis Philippe were all overthrown, not because they took the only method left open to them to preserve the support of the senators, but because they departed from the principles of the Revolution; do the republicans not see that the very announcement of that fact is the most decisive condemnation of their system of government? Do they expect to find liberals more eloquent than Mirabeau, republicans more energetic than Danton, socialists more ardent than Robespierre, generals more capable than Napoleon, citizen kings more astute than Louis Philippe? Republican power must be committed to some one. Mankind cannot exist an hour without a government: the first act of the infuriated and victorious rabble in the Chamber of Deputies was to name a Provisional one. But if experience has proved that intellect the most powerful, patriotism the most ardent, genius the most transcendent, penetration the most piercing, experience the most extensive, are invariably shipwrecked amidst the temptations and the shoals of newly acquired republican power, do they not see that it is not a form of government adapted for the weakness of humanity; and that if the leaders of revolution are not impelled to destruction by an external and overbearing necessity, they are infallibly seduced into it by the passions which, amidst the novelty of newly acquired power, arise in their own breasts? In either case, a revolution government must terminate in its own destruction,—in private sufferings and public disasters; and so it will be with the government of M. Lamartine and that of the new National Assembly, as it has been with all those which have preceded it.

“Deus patiens,” says St Augustin, “quia æternus.”^[13]—What an awful commentary on this magnificent text have recent events afforded! Eighteen years ago Louis Philippe forgot his loyalty and broke his oath; the first prince of the blood elevated himself to power by successful treason; he adopted, if he did not make, a revolution. He sent his lawful monarch into exile; he prevented the placing the crown on the head of his grandson; he for ever severed France from its lawful sovereigns. What has been the result of his usurpation? Where are now his enduring projects, his family alliances, his vast army, his consolidated power? During seventeen years he laboured with indefatigable industry and great ability to establish his newly acquired authority, and secure, by the confirmation of his own power, the perpetual exile of the lawful sovereign of France. Loud and long was the applause at first bestowed by the liberal party in Europe on the usurpation; great was the triumph of the bourgeoisie in every state at seeing a lawful monarch overturned by a well-concerted urban revolt, and the National converted into a Prætorian Guard, which could dispose of crowns at pleasure. But meanwhile the justice of Heaven neither slumbered nor slept. The means taken by Louis Philippe to consolidate his power, and which were in truth the only ones that remained at his disposal, consummated his ruin. His steady adherence to peace dissatisfied the ardent spirits which sought for war; his firm internal government disconcerted the republicans; his vast internal expenditure drew after it a serious embarrassment of finance. He could not appeal to the loyal feelings of the generous, for he was a usurper; he could not rest on the support of the multitude, for they would have driven the state to ruin; he could not rally the army round his throne, for they would have impelled him into war. Thus he could rest only on the selfish interests; and great was the skill with which he worked on that powerful principle in human affairs. But a government which stands on selfish feelings alone is a castle built on sand; the first wind of adversity levels it with the dust. Napoleon’s throne was founded on this principle, for he sacrificed to warlike selfishness; Louis Philippe on the same, for he sacrificed to pacific selfishness. Both have undergone the stern but just law of retribution. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, has been meted out to both. To Napoleon, who had sent so many foreign princes into banishment, and subverted so many gallant states, a defeat in the field, a melancholy exile, and unbefriended death, in a foreign land; to Louis Philippe, who had dethroned his lawful sovereign, and carried the standard of treason into the halls of the Tuilleries, the fate which he allotted to Charles X., that of being expelled with still greater ignominy from the same halls, being compelled to eat the bread of the stranger, and see his dynasty driven from their usurped throne amidst the derision and contempt of mankind.