“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.
“If absolute power,” says M. De Tocqueville, “shall re-establish itself in whatever hands, in any of the democratic states of Europe, I have no doubt it will assume a form unknown to our fathers. When the great families and the spirit of clanship prevailed, the individual who had to contend with tyranny never found himself alone—he was supported by his clients, his relations, his friends. But when the estates are divided, and races confounded, where shall we find the spirit of family? What form will remain in the influences of habit among a people changing perpetually, where every act of tyranny will find a precedent in previous disorders, where every crime can be justified by an example; where nothing exists of sufficient antiquity to render its destruction an object of dread, and nothing can be figured so new that men are afraid to engage in it? What resistance would manners afford which have already received so many shocks? What would public opinion do, when twenty persons do not exist bound together by any common tie; when you can no more meet with a man, a family, a body corporate, or a class of society, which could represent or act upon that opinion; where each citizen is equally poor, equally impotent, equally isolated, and can only oppose his individual weakness to the organised strength of the Central Government? To figure any thing equal TO THE DESPOTISM which would then be established amongst us, we would require to recur not to our own annals; we would be forced to go back to those frightful periods of tyranny, when, manners being corrupted, old recollections effaced, habits destroyed, opinions wavering, liberty deprived of its asylum under the laws, men made a sport of the people, and princes wore out the clemency of heaven rather than the patience of their subjects. They are blind indeed who look for democratic equality in the monarchy of Henry IV. and Louis XIV.”[[14]] What a commentary on this terrible prophecy have recent events supplied! The revolutionists say, that France is entering the last phase of the revolution.—It is true, it is entering it; but it is the last phase of punishment to which it is blindly hurrying. The sins of the fathers are about to be visited on the third generation. To talk of real freedom, stable institutions, protected industry, social happiness, in such a country, is out of the question. With their own hands, in the first great convulsion, they destroyed all the bulwarks of freedom in the land, and nothing remains to them, after the madness of socialism has run its course, but the equality of despotism. They have thrown off the laws of God and man, and Providence will leave their punishment to their own hands. “The Romans,” says Gibbon, “aspired to be equal: they were levelled by the equality of Asiatic bondage.”
Amidst so many mournful subjects of contemplation, there is one consideration which forces itself upon the view, of great importance in the present condition of this country. This revolution in France being a revolt of labour against capital, its first principle is a deadly hostility to the principle of free-trade. The recent barbarous expulsion of the English labourers from France, several thousands in number, after having enriched the country by their labour, and taught it by their example, proves what sympathy foreign industry meets with from the great and fraternising republic. The confiscation of their hard-won earnings by the cessation of the savings’ banks to pay more than a tenth in cash, shows what they have to expect from the justice and solvency of its government. With the rise of the communist and socialist party in France to power, whose abomination is capital, whose idol is labour, it may with certainty be predicted that the sternest and most unbending prohibition of British goods will immediately be adopted by the great philanthropic and fraternising republic. All other countries which follow in any degree the example of the great parent republic, by the popularising of their institutions, will, from the influence of the labour party, do the same. America already draws nineteen million dollars, or nearly £4,000,000 sterling, from its imports, the greater part of which is a direct tax levied on the industry of this country. Reciprocity, always one-sided, will ere long be absolutely isolated. We shall be,
“Penitus divisos orbe Britannos,”
even more by our policy than our situation.
What chance there is of free-trade doctrines being adopted by the present socialist and free-trade government in France, may be judged of by the following quotation from the Constitutionnel:—
“Is not, in fact, the consumer, such as the free-traders represent him to us, a strange creation? He is, as he has been wittily described, a fantastic being—a monster who has a mouth and a stomach to consume produce, but who has neither legs to move nor arms to work. We do not fear that the operative classes will suffer themselves to be seduced by those doctrines. We are aware that they have constantly rejected them through the organs of the press more especially charged with the defence of their interests; but it behoves them likewise that the Provisional Government should remain on its guard against principles which would be still more disastrous under existing circumstances. M. Bethmont, the minister of commerce, has declared, in a letter addressed by him to the association for the defence of national labour, that he would never grant facilities of which the consequences would be calculated to injure our manufacturers. We see by this declaration that the dispositions of the Provisional Government are good. The very inquiry which is now being held to devise means to ameliorate the moral and material condition of the operatives, ought to confirm the government in the necessity of maintaining the system which protects industry. Let us inquire what the consequence would be, in fact, if we were so imprudent as to suffer foreign produce to enter France free of duty. Political economy teaches us that wages find their balance in consequence of the competition existing between nations; but they find their equilibrium by falling, and not by rising. If that were not the case, there would be no possibility of maintaining the struggle. Now, if we opened our ports, this cruel necessity would become the more imperious for us, as, being placed opposite to England in conditions of inferiority, greater in respect to capital, to the means of transport, and to the price of matters of the first necessity, we could not redeem those disadvantages except by a reduction of wages. This, in fact, would be the annihilation of the operative.”—Constitutionnel, March 16, 1848.
This is the inevitable result of republican and socialist triumph in the neighbouring kingdom, and the impulse given to liberal institutions, an inlet thereby opened to manufacturing jealousy all over the world. Debarred thus from all possibility of reciprocal advantages; shut out for ever from the smallest benefit in return, is it expedient for Great Britain to continue any longer her concessions to foreign industry, or incur the blasting imputation of a suicidal policy towards her own inhabitants in favour of ungrateful and selfish foreigners, who meet concessions with prohibition, and industrial teaching with savage expulsion from the instructed territory.
“No revolution,” says Madame de Staël, “can succeed in any country, unless it is headed by a portion of the higher, and the majority of the middle classes.” Recent events have afforded another to the many confirmations which history affords of this important observation. Had the National Guard of Paris stood firm, the troops of the line would never have wavered; the government would not have been intimidated; a socialist revolution would have been averted; public credit preserved; the savings’ bank, the place of deposit of the poor—the public funds, the investment of the middle classes—saved from destruction. When we contemplate the dreadful monetary crisis which has been brought on in France by the revolution; when we behold the bank of France suspending payments, and all the chief banks of the metropolis rendered bankrupt by the shock; when we behold wealth in ship-loads flying from its menaced shores, and destitution in crowds stalking through its crowded and idle streets, we are struck with horror, and impressed with a deeper sense of thankfulness at the good sense and patriotic spirit of the middle classes in this country, which has so quickly crushed the efforts of the seditious to involve us in similar calamities. “The unbought loyalty of men,—the cheap defence of nations,”—still, thank God! subsists amongst us. The poison of infidelity has not destroyed the moral bonds of society—the rolling-stone of revolution has not crushed the institutions of freedom amongst us. There are hearts to love their country—arms to defend their Queen—not less among our civil than our military defenders. The pillage of Glasgow on the first outbreak of the disturbances there, their speedy suppression, by the energy of the inhabitants, has not been lost on the empire. It is not in vain that twenty thousand constables came forward to be enrolled in one day in Glasgow, and eleven thousand in Manchester. We see what we have to expect from the seditious; they see what they have to expect from the middle classes of society, and the whole virtuous part of the lower. With such dispositions in both, Great Britain may be exposed to local disorder or momentary alarm, but it can never be seriously endangered, or undergo that worst of horrors—a social revolution. Nor will she, with such dispositions in her people, be less prepared to assert the ancient glory of her arms, should circumstances render that alternative necessary. She has no internal reforms to make that she cannot achieve peaceably, by the means which her constitution affords. Her giant strength slumbers, not sleeps. Our ships of war, in the noble words of Mr Canning, “how soon one of those stupendous masses, now reposing on their shadows in perfect stillness,—how soon, upon any call of patriotism, or of necessity, it would assume the likeness of an animated thing, instinct with life and motion—how soon it would ruffle, as it were, its swelling plumage—how quickly it would put forth all its beauty and its bravery, collect its scattered elements of strength, and awaken its dormant thunder!”—how soon would the flag of Waterloo again be unfurled to the breeze!