imperial school has not yet died out, and its spirit still lives in the Conseil d'état and the Conseils de préfecture, in the Cour des comptes, and the Bank of France, as well as in the chefs de division, and chefs de bureaux of the respective ministries. It has a trustworthy instrument in the police, which in no country does its duty more devotedly, intelligently, and conscientiously, than in France. These officials, supported by this army as guardian of the peace, guide the state in the grooves laid down by the genius of Napoleon I., while the citizen and peasant never tire of procuring the costly oil for the machine by their activity, moderation, and thrift. Thus it is that the politicians, who imagine they have made the machine because they are in possession of it and have given it a new name, may be allowed for a time to have their way and to behave like madmen. Indeed, one is often tempted to compare France to a ship which has on board the inmates of a lunatic asylum. Captain, crew, and the sane portion of the passengers allow the lunatics to play at being in command for a time, and as they have often looked on and feel an unshaken confidence in their ship, they quietly continue in their daily occupations and habits, until the dangerous rout threaten to cut the rigging, destroy the compass, and burn the mast. Then, though somewhat late, they intervene, and fasten the madmen below hatches. No one has seen this fact more clearly or expressed it more concisely than Tocqueville, the great enemy of bureaucracy. our days," he says,* we have more than once seen the administration outlive the Government which it served. While the great powers of state were overthrown or growing feeble, the secondary powers carried on the business. of government with regularity and promptitude. There was revolution without anarchy. The reason is that in the France of to-day the administration proper forms a * " "In * In the grand fragments for the projected second part of his "Ancien Régime," which M. Lanfrey would have done well to read before he drew up his case against the 18th Brumaire. special body in the state, independent, so to speak, of the sovereign authority, and which has its fixed customs, its own rules, and its own agents, so that France can for a long time present the appearance of a body which continues on its way after the head has been separated from it. This is the work of Napoleon, who by the establishment of this powerful machine rendered revolution at once more easy and less dangerous." But it is no insensient, blindly working machine; it is living and conscious of a purpose; and when we see it continuing its task so silently amid all the talk and noise, we involuntarily think of the legendary hero who "Am Steuer sass, Und hat kein Wort gesprochen; Er lenkt das Schiff mit klugem Maass, Such is, in its rough outline, the form which the French "ideal" takes in practice, and what Cæsar's Gaul, "eager for change, fond of talk and pugnacious," has become under the influences of his modern culture. Thus it becomes possible to unite a spirit of factiousness with the habit of routine; to indulge a passionate temperament, which the rationalistic culture has suppressed and concealed, but not moderated or allayed; and to combine in public life the enthusiasm of humanity with savage cruelty, inspiration with scepticism, illusion with conscious deceit, and love of power with vain ideas of general happiness. But the one thing needful in order to be, not an amiable, witty, and sociable nation, but a free people, is to possess truthfulness, moral courage, and self-command; and these are qualities which rationalistic ideals will never either im* "Who is at the helm, And has spoken ne'er a word; He guides the ship with skill and wisdom, Until the storm has broken." Since 1879 this is no longer the case. For the first time since 1800 has the old well-trained personnel been replaced by new and inexperienced men of the Republican party. plant or foster. France will never know such a fall as Spain when she sank so quickly from her lofty height. France is secured from material, moral, and intellectual ruin by her great wealth, by the private virtues which flourish among her citizens, such as industry, thrift, family affection, and probity, as well as by the sceptical character of her culture and literature; but that she is rapidly approaching a political condition like that of Spain seems to be beyond all doubt. Alexis de Tocqueville once told Nassau Senior of an old friend of his, a Benedictine monk, who was thirteen years old when Louis XVI. came to the throne. He was an intelligent, well-read man, who had always lived in the world, had thought over all that he saw or heard, and whose mind was still fresh and active. He did not deny the material superiority of the present age, but he was of opinion that the French of our day stood intellectually and morally far below their forefathers. Tocqueville agreed with him. "These seventy years of revolution," he remarked to Senior, "have destroyed our cheerful confidence, our courage, our trust in ourselves, our public spirit, and among the great majority of the higher classes at least all passions save only the most vulgar and selfish vanity and covetousness." These words were spoken by the great patriot in 1858. CHAPTER II. NAPOLEON III. AND THE REPUBLICANS. MODERN democratic France has gone the way of all the democracies which history records. After having been practically under a dictatorship for a considerable time, it has been so in form also for the last twenty-five years. This is not the place to discuss the value of such a form of government. Like all others, it is good or bad according as the power is in the hands of a Pericles or a Dionysius, a Trajan or a Domitian, a Cosimo or an Alessandro de' Medici. As it is the most personal of all forms of government, more depends in it than in any other on the good or bad qualities of the ruler. At bottom every Government is personal; even an English Premier only governs by the force of his personality; and his party has to bear with his faults, his inconsistencies, and even his whims in lesser matters, in order to give effect to its general opinions and interests, and to retain power by means of the personal superiority of its leader. The real difference between a legitimist, aristocratic, or parliamentary form of government and the Cæsarian democracy is that in the former the virtual ruler is subject to a control and to a counter-balancing force which do not exist in the latter. In an hereditary monarchy the control and counter-balance are found in the dynasty from which the ruling Minister has received his power, and which identifies itself both with the state and the nation. In an aristocratic commonwealth they are found in the traditions and interests of the class to which the ruler belongs; under a parliamentary form of government in the party in opposition, which is always prepared to take over the government, as soon as the leader of the party in power goes beyond the limit within which his own interests and those of his party do not directly clash with those of the country. In all these cases the fall of the virtual ruler does not bring the government to an end, but in a permanent dynasty, in the permanent traditions and interests of an aristocracy, in the permanent institution of an opposition which is always ready to take power, there exists a temporary substitute for the power and guidance of a great personality. A change of cabinet never exposed Prussia, Venice, or England to anarchy, whether the nation showed its disapproval of the policy of the Minister in power by the voice of the national dynasty, the ruling class, or the parliament. But in France, as in the Athens of Pericles, in imperial Rome, and in the Florence of the Medici, the single principle is, and the whole system of government implies, that every measure is or may be made a cabinet question. As there is no permanent organ, such as dynasty, aristocracy, or opposition, in and through which the national will can concentrate and express itself, as indeed it can only concentrate and express itself in and through the ruler in whom the executive power resides, the constitution must fall with the ruler as soon as a measure is decided against him. There is no man, no institution, which can provisionally take his place. France has been in this condition ever since she overthrew her hereditary dynasty without either an aristocracy or two organised powerful parties to replace it, and without an administration independent of the central power. She intrusts the government now to a soldier, now to an orator, now to a president, now to a premier; but, whoever it be, his fall is absolutely certain to involve the fall of the whole system of Government, because all the threads of administration are centred in its hands. Whether France be an empire, a kingdom, or a republic, whether the chief of the state calls himself Napoleon, Louis Philippe, or Gambetta, not a village constable |