What it demands is the right to come and go, speak and write, hear and read, praise and blame, as it likes, though it only wishes to exercise this right and see it exercised in a spirit of moderation. There must be an assembly to make laws and to control the executive power, without obstructing its measures or interfering with its functions. There must be local councils, which, while helping the state officials with their advice and local knowledge, leave the decision with those who represent the general interests of the country as opposed to the particular interests of the locality. There must be a press which discusses national affairs with impartiality, discrimination, and good taste. Lastly, there must be publicity in the courts of justice, to prevent any abuse of power. These institutions have become a necessity to the French people, and the most popular Government in France would be a strong Government which left the country such institutions, and proved thereby that it was not afraid of them, but whose consciousness of its own strength and duty was no less displayed in keeping liberty within the bounds of morality, good taste, and moderation. For the French have no liking for a rough boisterous expression of the sentiment of liberty, and they look upon the excesses which are the accompaniment of English and American political life as intolerable interruptions to public order. Yet they do not feel called upon to put a stop themselves to such excesses. They would rather be protected by the police than take any measures themselves against such disturbances, and they are only too glad to let a judge condemn abuses of the liberty of speech and of the press, which they themselves would hardly dare to condemn in the jury-box. If some ruler could assure to the French a certain continuity of government, and at the same time inspire them. with a conviction of his power and of his determination to use it; if he could ensure them alike against the dead stillness of a despotism and the raging clamour of unre strained freedom; if he would not trouble them to take a share in the government, nor yet interfere with their right to discuss its acts with discrimination and humour; if, finally, ́he did not make too great a demand on their moral courage, he might give the agitated country a durable government and leave the power to his legitimate successor. For he would have the nation behind him—the nation, which has nothing in common with the small group of noisy or intriguing politicians, whom we see moving on the political stage, and whom it only tolerates, because it has not the courage to drive them off itself, and no one offers to do so for it. But that some one will do it this service, before the centenary of the great Revolution is celebrated, scarcely admits of doubt. May this liberator only have the courage to keep firmly and unerringly on his road! Then perhaps it may yet be granted to those of the present generation to see this noble member of the European family end its long throes and bring forth a healthy political order, after they have followed its struggles with interest and with sympathy, as other generations followed, sometimes with surprise, sometimes with admiration, but always with attention, its fair and healthy development in past centuries. APPENDIX. THE WORKING-CLASS IN PARIS. "LE SUBLIME.' WE are not about to discuss Longinus's Tepì v↓ovs—of which there is little enough in the present day to remind us-but a sublime" of whom-not of which-there are specimens in hundreds of thousands close at hand. The description of le sublime has a twofold interest: firstly, the anonymous work, with which we are concerned, throws a clear light on Socialism and its causes; secondly, it is connected with a popular novel, which seems to be in every one's hands, and in the last two years is said to have almost reached the hundredth edition. I have not read Emile Zola's "Assommoir," but I have looked through it; and on being told by a friend that the author had not, like Maxime du Camp, described the life of the workingclass from personal observation, and from information gathered from the police, the law-courts, the hospitals, or official reports, but from a book which was then out of print, and which treated the subject ex professo, I became exceedingly curious to procure a copy. I have at length succeeded in doing so, have read it with great interest, and derived considerable instruction from it. Question Sociale : Le Sublime ou le Travailleur, comme il est en 1870 et ce qu'il peut être, par D. P. Paris: Librairie Internationale, A. Lacroix, Verboeckhoven & Cie., 1870. M. Denis Poulot, the author, has since become one of the twenty Radical maires of Paris. |