FOURTH EDITION.
LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
——
1849
LONDON: PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET.
I venture to believe that nothing will be found in the following pages which bears the impress of my personal situation. While events of such magnitude are passing before his eyes, a man who did not forget himself would deserve to be for ever forgotten. I have thought of nothing but the situation of my country. The more I reflect upon that, the more I am convinced that the evil which lies at the root of all her evils, which undermines and destroys her governments and her liberties, her dignity and her happiness, is the evil which I attack;—the idolatry of Democracy.
Whether the accession of M. Louis Napoléon Bonaparte to the Presidency of the Republic will be found an efficacious remedy for this disease, the future will show. What I have said here after the election of M. Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, I should have equally said, without the slightest alteration, if General Cavaignac had been elected. It is not to individuals, but to society itself, that great social truths are addressed.