before 1792, preserving alone such useful and just reforms as have been consecrated by time. But, as to the detestable passions which were substituted in France with so much violence and brutality to the spirit of reform, it can only be mastered when the odious and always active causes which gave birth to it are removed.

M. Dunoyer declares that he does not advocate this necessary return to the ancient monarchical system, because such a system is alone possible or durable, but because it was destroyed without any real necessity, not in the interest of reform, but solely in the brutal ambition of usurping its place, and because in the subsequent succession of political systems no one has a title to duration more than another. They are all so many usurpations, having nothing but force to rely upon. No one feels himself in any way obliged to respect them, and they are only obeyed so long as they can compel obedience.

The vulgar ambition, the mixture of vanity and of covetousness, which gives birth to the love of power under all forms and degrees, renders all stability impossible. It is this spirit of vulgar covetousness which renders France indifferent to true liberty, and causes place alone to be sought for at all hazards and all risks. It is such a prostitution of the political sense which could alone render a 2nd of December possible. This passion was manifested under the first Empire, when no end of Jacobins, who, only a few years after having destroyed the ancient aristocracy, allowed themselves to be transformed into princes, dukes, counts, and barons, and were ready for money and titles to sacrifice the liberty so precious to their country to the despotism of an adventurer. They allowed the world to see that in destroying monarchy all they aimed at was to replace it by another absolute government, in which there was room for many accomplices. The same passions for place and money were but too manifest under the restoration and the monarchy of July. The disgraceful spectacle of the 2nd of December was of itself sufficient to attest that the love of liberty had no root in the country, and that, under the name of love of equality, ambition, cupidity, and vanity were rampant in every direction.

However humiliating, M. Dunoyer says, the statement may be, there is no question but that these deplorable passions exercise the most decisive influence on actions, and alone preside effectively over all determinations arrived at. Liberty is invoked at each successive revolution, but the result is always the same to set up some new vulgar upstarts and parvenus. The result of an interminable series of revolutions has, indeed, been not to extend liberty and diminish taxation, but to confer more extensive powers upon the administrative authority, and to augment taxation in proportion to the number and gravity of the successive usurpations.

A further result, according to the same authority, of the perpetual changes of government which are brought about by what he calls the "passion égalitaire" for the exercise of authority-that is, we suppose, equality in the enjoyment of power and wealth, and which is substituted in France for the love of liberty in work, the real passion of the English nation-is the tendency which it has to place power in the most ignoble hands, and to degrade authority at the same time that it perverts its action. Hence it is that, in France, the most ancient and noble families,

the most illustrious royalty in Europe, has been supplanted by contemptible adventurers, the most obscure, the most immoral, and the most ferocious parvenus.

The language is strong, and the picture given of the results of such a state of things is such as no Englishman, having a regard to his own dignity and the respect due to a neighbour, would venture to portray :

"Impossibility of consolidating the government in the hands of any one person; a more and more general abandonment of individual liberties and of those political guarantees which a nation can least do without; a monstrous development of a population of functionaries equally disposed, according to their interests, to serve all forms of government or to abandon them; a progressive vulgarising of the personnel in all branches of the public service; and in the body of the nation, a more and more general disposition to allow oneself to be led by ambitious persons of the most vulgar description, to be seduced by the most absurd systems, to do entirely without liberty, to submit to the domination of nobodies, often as utterly destitute of morality as of importance: such are the lamentable results, unfortunately too plainly attested, which have sprung from this ambitious fury, at once vain and greedy, which I call the revolutionary spirit, and which, having gradually substituted itself, in the course of ages, to the most generous instincts of our nature, have finished by casting us into that state of deep degradation in which Europe sees us in the present day."

It is in the presence of such deplorable results that M. Dunoyer argues that it is impossible but that French society shall not come to recognise how far the fatal tendencies she has given way to have led her astray from the strait and simple path, which a reflective and well understood consideration of her true interests would have led her to follow. Nothing has resulted from the overthrow of the monarchy, which it may have been necessary to limit or restrain, but certainly not to destroy, but the most disastrous consequences. It is time to profit by the experience gained at such a cost. To continue in the same system is to provoke catastrophes. There is, then, no alternative but to return to the old state of things. There is not one of the honourable objects which the nation proposes to itself to obtain, which could not be more easily arrived at under the ancient dynasty-under the traditional patronage of the family which has presided over its destinies for so many centuries-than from vulgar and rapacious adventurers who have so often disputed among themselves for the last seventy years the right of pillaging its honour, its goods, and its liberties.

What M. Dunoyer insists upon, indeed, at length, is, that the restoration of the ancient family of kings would not imply the abandoning of any legitimate pretensions, but, on the contrary, would place the country in a position in which it could best labour in honourable assiduity in supporting the true interests and the most precious rights of the nation.

Would France, for example, he argues, lose its sovereignty by electing a member of the illustrious family of the Bourbons? (M. Dunoyer, in writing upon the antiquity of the French race of kings, forgets, like many others, that the collateral branch of Valois, Orleans, and Angoulême, succeeded to the Capetian and Carlovingian lines, and reigned from 1328 to 1578. Louis XII., surnamed "the Father of his People," was of the

House of Orleans. The Bourbons who came in with the King of Navarre reckon, in reality, only six sovereigns.) It is not, he says, recommended to the nation to abdicate its prerogative, but to exercise it with greater judgment and discrimination. The regular and pacific conquest of liberty, sacrificed by a succession of revolutions, could alone be ensured by such a proceeding. The first and most imperious necessity for a people that wishes to be free is to respect its government. Reform is not revolution, or, at least, ought not to be so, except in the hands of subversive doctrinaires. It is impossible to over-estimate what the disregard of this fact-the wish to become free without respecting the security of government-has cost France at the present moment. Liberty has never been used save to trample authority under foot. It has never been obtained save to wield it as an irresistible arm against now one power and then another, just as if political reforms had no other aim and end than the overthrow of the powers that be. It is difficult to imagine a mode of proceeding more fatal to liberty, for it places each successive authority in opposition to all concessions. If, in the present day, all liberty is abrogated-if the ancient privileges of the three orders and of the corporations have been replaced by the unlimited despotism of an administration which absolutely masters all action-if this administration has been endowed with the most formidable legal power that has ever been conceived, and armed with material forces having power to crush all resistance, these sad results are to be traced to the perilous position in which previous governments have been placed by the abuse of liberty.

If, then, to deliver over France to the ambitious and covetous passions of the multitude led naturally to despotism, so much the more is loyalty the real virtue of people who aspire to liberty. The English, M. Dunoyer says, have long acted upon this principle. The more value they attach to their liberties, the more they seek to extend and to strengthen them, the more loyally do they adhere to their royalty. Loyalty is among them the first of civic virtues (M. Dunoyer was manifestly not on terms of intimacy with some exceptional nonconformist demagogues), and it is precisely because they wish to be free that they also wish their sovereigns to feel themselves in full security in their midst.

Nothing can be more manifest than that such an inviolable respect for royal authority has not been so baneful to the progress of liberty with them, as revolutionary catastrophes and the overthrow of dynasties have been with France.

But, it might be asked, if the substitution of the spirit of loyalty to the spirit of revolt is desirable in the cause of liberty, wherefore provoke a restoration which can only be brought about by another revolution? M. Dunoyer's reply to this is, because "the power which exists only does so in spite of the principles which ought to be brought back into honour; because it exists only by the violent overthrow of those principies; because it is only one of those dominations which for seventy years past have supplanted one another; because it is that one, above all others, which has been established by the most execrable means; because it is incontestably the one amongst all in which the revolutionary passion is most cruelly and viciously represented, an impure admixture of ambitions, inclinations, and despotic actions, coveteousness of power united to a hatred of liberty. Had it been directed by better motives, had its

beginnings been less odious, it would not the less have the wrong attached to it of having sprung like all others from the spirit of subversion, and it is impossible to approve of any one of these establishments without recognising for the same reason the rights of those which have preceded it, and thus no end to the revolutions which have brought each about can be foreseen without going back to the first; and finally, because if the interest of good reforms, in virtue of which the first steps were professedly taken, imperiously demanded that the ancient royalty should not be overthrown, the first measures of reparation to which it would be necessary to have recourse, when it shall be really and sincerely wished to resume the interrupted course of reforms, will manifestly be to restore it."

It is, then, to this power of antique origin that, according to M. Dunoyer, it will be necessary to return, if it is wished to replace the spirit of subversion by the spirit of reform; nor can the people of continental Europe expect to see their governments enter upon the pathway of reforms until they-the people-have abandoned that of revolutions. Governments of recent and revolutionary origin cannot afford to be conciliatory. They are encompassed by dangers, and the inclinations of those who surround them are simply to multiply abuses. No liberal concessions have ever come in France from governments that have sprung from revolutions. The free agency of individuals is sacrificed in such to the vanity of the personnel of the administration.

Previous to the revolution of 1792, Louis XVI., Frederick of Prussia, and Joseph II., had manifested the most favourable dispositions towards granting the reforms claimed by the philosophers. So also Louis XVIII., Charles X. (up to the ordonnances of July), and Louis Philippe up to the last day of his reign, nobly persisted in upholding that liberty, which no government which has sprung from revolution has dared to concede.

Further, if the "Almanacks" of the monarchy are examined, it will be found contrary to what would be expected, that more citizens enjoyed public employments under the monarchy than under governments that have sprung from revolutions, and which naturally wish to strengthen their position by surrounding themselves with the upper classes. It was too great a tendency to satisfy the ambitious desires of the lower and middle classes by the monarchy, especially the monarchy of July, which fomented bad passions and the revolutionary spirit. A restored monarchy should, according to M. Dunoyer, avoid the error of over-exciting the instincts of vanity and ambition in the lower classes. Like M. About, he denounces the ill-regulated passions which push all classes, without distinction, to the pursuit of public functions. Government now-a-days mixes itself up so much with all the details of life, that public employ ments have become a kind of necessity for every one. There are in France as many persons deriving a livelihood from the products of industry, including in that category the army and navy, as there are producers. This is the greatest discouragement that can possibly be inflicted upon industry. People in consequence give up work in despair, and enlist into the subsidised classes. Royalty alone, enabled in a great measure to rely upon itself, did not require so vast an army of paid civil and military servants.

The restoration of the antique royal power being then, according to M. Dunoyer, the sole means of recovering to France its liberty and repose, it

is happily unnecessary to urge the importance of a perfect reconciliation between the august personage who is the present head of that illustrious family and his noble relatives of the House of Orleans. The happy reconciliation is, we are assured, "thanks be to Heaven," a fact long ago accomplished. But it is of importance to set forth that which explains it, that which justifies it, and that which rendered it necessary; it is more particularly of importance to show how much France is interested in seeing it consolidated, affirmed, and openly avowed by the princes of the two families, as well as by their friends, principally by the chief of the royal house, who is the person whose enlightened and cordial assent is of the greatest importance, and who, by the nature of his dispositions, can contribute most powerfully to make it favourably received, and render it efficacious for the welfare of France.

What happy results, asks M. Dunoyer, are we not entitled to anticipate from such a reconciliation, especially if it is accomplished under the influence of really disinterested sentiments? That which the reconciliation of the two branches of the House of Bourbon could do for the pacification of political rivalries and the much-to-be-desired formation of a proper public spirit in the country, is more easy to conceive than to express. Think for a moment of the impression which the nation would experience when it learnt the news, spread everywhere, and incapable of being disputed, that the whole of the royal family was united; that, on the one hand, the princes of the House of Orleans admit that public disorder for the last seventy years had for first cause the violent and uncalled-for destruction of the antique royal power in the person of the elder branch of the family; that they admit that order cannot be re-established but by the reparation of that violence, thrice and each time consummated in vain; that they spontaneously do homage to the hereditary right of their relative, and that they finally express their desire to resume in the royal family the rank which is assigned to them by the fundamental law of the monarchy; while, on the other side, let the surviving chief of the dynasty, informed of the disposition of his relatives, taking into consideration the nature of the events which accidentally caused the power to pass into the hands of the younger branch, as well as the advantageous use to the monarchy and to the nation which it made of it, holds as good the temporary possession which it held, consents to re-enter France only when accompanied by all the princes of whom the royal family is composed, and testifies the firm resolution of only re-entering, in fact, with the view to maintain all that the wisdom of King Louis Philippe was enabled to add of true ameliorations to the constitutional institutions, for which France was originally indebted to the preceding kings of the elder branch. Here is a whole programme!