Chapter I: Front Matter (1)

BLACKWOOD’S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
NO. CCCXC. APRIL, 1848. VOL. LXIII.

CONTENTS.

FALL OF THE THRONE OF THE BARRICADES, 393
A GERMAN DITTY, 419
TWO SONNETS, 420
MY ROUTE INTO CANADA, 425
THE CONQUEST OF NAPLES, 436
TRAVELLING IN TAFFYLAND, 455
LIFE AND TIMES OF LORD HARDWICKE, 463
HOW WE GOT POSSESSION OF THE TUILLERIES, 484
THE CAXTONS: A FAMILY PICTURE. Part I., 513

EDINBURGH:
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, 45, GEORGE STREET;
AND 37, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.

_To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed._
SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.

PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.

BLACKWOOD’S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

NO. CCCXC. APRIL, 1848. VOL. LXIII.

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.