When then a nation is placed in a sufficing territory, with settled laws, fixed interests, sacred creeds, its worship in full force, its social classes graduated, its administration organised, it is monarchical in spite of seas, rivers, or mountains. It abdicates and empowers the monarchy to foresee, to will, to act for it. It is the most perfect of governments for such functions. It calls itself by the two names of society itself, unity and hereditary right.
IX.
If a people, on the contrary, is at one of those epochs when it is necessary to act with all the intensity of its strength in order to operate within and without one of those organic transformations which are as necessary to people as is a current to waves or explosion to compressed powers—a republic is the obligatory and fated form of a nation at such a moment.
For a sudden, irresistible, convulsive action of the social body, the arm and will of all is needed; the people become a mob, and rush headlong to danger. It can alone suffice to its own danger. What other arm but that of the whole people could stir what it has to stir?—displace what it has to displace?—install what it desires to found? The monarch would break his sceptre into fragments on it. There must be a lever capable of raising thirty millions of wills—this lever the nation alone possesses. It is in itself the moving power, the fulcrum and the lever.
X.
We cannot ask of the law to act against the law, of tradition to act against tradition, of established order to act against established order. It would be to require strength from weakness, life from suicide; and, besides, we should ask in vain of the monarchical power to accomplish these changes, in which very often all perish, and the king foremost. Such a course would be the contradiction to the monarchy: how could it attempt it?
To ask a king to destroy the empire of a religion which consecrates him; to despoil of their riches a clergy who has them by the same divine title as that by which he has tenure of his kingdom; to degrade an aristocracy which is the first step of his throne; to throw down social hierarchies of which he is the head and crown; to undermine laws of which he is the highest,—is to ask of the vaults of an edifice to sap the foundation. The king could not do so, and would not. In thus overthrowing all that serves him for support, he feels that he would be rendered wholly destitute. He would be playing with his throne and dynasty. He is responsible for his race. He is prudent by nature, and a temporiser from necessity. He must soothe, please, manage, and be on terms with all constituted interests. He is the king of the worship, aristocracy, laws, manners, abuses, and falsehoods of the empire. Even the vices of the constitution form a portion of his strength. To threaten them is to destroy himself. He may hate them: he dares not to attack them.
XI.
A republic alone can suffice for such crises: nations know this, and cling to it as their sole hope of preservation. The will of the people becomes the ruling power. It drives from its presence the timid, seeks the bold and the determined, summons all men to aid in the great work, makes trial of, employs, and combines the force, the devotion, the heroism of every man. It is the populace that holds the helm of the vessel, on which the most prompt, or the most firm seizes, until it is again torn from him by a stronger hand. But every one governs in the common name. Private consideration, timidity of situation, difference of rank, all disappears. No one is responsible—to-day he rises to power—to-morrow he descends to exile or the scaffold—there is no morrow, all is to-day—resistance is crushed by the irresistible power of movement. All bends—all yields before the people. The resentments of castes—the abolished forms of worship—the decimation of property—the extirpated abuses—the humiliated aristocracies—all are lost in the thundering sound of the overthrow of ancient ideas and things. On whom can we demand revenge? The nation answers for all to all, and no man has aught to require from it. It does not survive itself, it braves recrimination and vengeance—it is absolute as an element—anonymous, as fatality—it completes its work, and when that is ended, says, "Let us rest; and let us assume monarchy."