Any person who recollects the history of the absurd outbreak of
Strasburg, in which Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte figured, three
years ago, must remember that, however silly the revolt was, however,
foolish its pretext, however doubtful its aim, and inexperienced its
leader, there was, nevertheless, a party, and a considerable one in
France, that were not unwilling to lend the new projectors their aid.
The troops who declared against the Prince, were, it was said, all but
willing to declare for him; and it was certain that, in many of the
regiments of the army, there existed a strong spirit of disaffection,
and an eager wish for the return of the imperial system and family.
As to the good that was to be derived from the change, that is another
question. Why the Emperor of the French should be better than the King
of the French, or the King of the French better than the King of France
and Navarre, it is not our business to inquire; but all the three
monarchs have no lack of supporters; republicanism has no lack of
supporters; St. Simoninnism was followed by a respectable body of
admirers; Robespierrism has a select party of friends. If, in a country
where so many quacks have had their day, Prince Louis Napoleon thought
he might renew the imperial quackery, why should he not? It has
recollections with it that must always be dear to a gallant nation; it
has certain claptraps in its vocabulary that can never fail to inflame
a vain, restless, grasping, disappointed one.
In the first place, and don’t let us endeavor to disguise it, they hate
us. Not all the protestations of friendship, not all the wisdom of Lord
Palmerston, not all the diplomacy of our distinguished plenipotentiary,
Mr. Henry Lytton Bulwer—and let us add, not all the benefit which both
countries would derive from the alliance—can make it, in our times at
least, permanent and cordial. They hate us. The Carlist organs revile
us with a querulous fury that never sleeps; the moderate party, if they
admit the utility of our alliance, are continually pointing out our
treachery, our insolence, and our monstrous infractions of it; and for
the Republicans, as sure as the morning comes, the columns of their
journals thunder out volleys of fierce denunciations against our
unfortunate country. They live by feeding the natural hatred against
England, by keeping old wounds open, by recurring ceaselessly to the
history of old quarrels, and as in these we, by God’s help, by land and
by sea, in old times and late, have had the uppermost, they perpetuate
the shame and mortification of the losing party, the bitterness of past
defeats, and the eager desire to avenge them. A party which knows how
to exploiter this hatred will always be popular to a certain extent;
and the imperial scheme has this, at least, among its conditions.
Then there is the favorite claptrap of the “natural frontier.” The
Frenchman yearns to be bounded by the Rhine and the Alps; and next
follows the cry, “Let France take her place among nations, and direct,
as she ought to do, the affairs of Europe.” These are the two chief
articles contained in the new imperial programme, if we may credit the
journal which has been established to advocate the cause. A natural
boundary—stand among the nations—popular development—Russian alliance,
and a reduction of la perfide Albion to its proper insignificance. As
yet we know little more of the plan: and yet such foundations are
sufficient to build a party upon, and with such windy weapons a
substantial Government is to be overthrown!
In order to give these doctrines, such as they are, a chance of finding
favor with his countrymen, Prince Louis has the advantage of being able
to refer to a former great professor of them—his uncle Napoleon. His
attempt is at once pious and prudent; it exalts the memory of the
uncle, and furthers the interests of the nephew, who attempts to show
what Napoleon’s ideas really were; what good had already resulted from
the practice of them; how cruelly they had been thwarted by foreign
wars and difficulties; and what vast benefits WOULD have resulted from
them; ay, and (it is reasonable to conclude) might still, if the French
nation would be wise enough to pitch upon a governor that would
continue the interrupted scheme. It is, however, to be borne in mind
that the Emperor Napoleon had certain arguments in favor of his
opinions for the time being, which his nephew has not employed. On the
13th Vendemiaire, when General Bonaparte believed in the excellence of
a Directory, it may be remembered that he aided his opinions by forty
pieces of artillery, and by Colonel Murat at the head of his dragoons.
There was no resisting such a philosopher; the Directory was
established forthwith, and the sacred cause of the minority triumphed,
in like manner, when the General was convinced of the weakness of the
Directory, and saw fully the necessity of establishing a Consulate,
what were his arguments? Moreau, Lannes, Murat, Berthier, Leclerc,
Lefebvre—gentle apostles of the truth!—marched to St. Cloud, and there,
with fixed bayonets, caused it to prevail. Error vanished in an
instant. At once five hundred of its high-priests tumbled out of
windows, and lo! three Consuls appeared to guide the destinies of
France! How much more expeditious, reasonable, and clinching was this
argument of the 18th Brumaire, than any one that can be found in any
pamphlet! A fig for your duodecimos and octavos! Talk about points,
there are none like those at the end of a bayonet; and the most
powerful of styles is a good rattling “article” from a nine-pounder.
At least this is our interpretation of the manner in which were always
propagated the Idées Napoléoniennes. Not such, however, is Prince
Louis’s belief; and, if you wish to go along with him in opinion, you
will discover that a more liberal, peaceable, prudent Prince never
existed: you will read that “the mission of Napoleon” was to be the
“testamentary executor of the revolution;” and the Prince should have
added the legatee; or, more justly still, as well as the EXECUTOR, he
should be called the EXECUTIONER, and then his title would be complete.
In Vendemiaire, the military Tartuffe, he threw aside the Revolution’s
natural heirs, and made her, as it were, ALTER HER WILL; on the 18th of
Brumaire he strangled her, and on the 19th seized on her property, and
kept it until force deprived him of it. Illustrations, to be sure, are
no arguments, but the example is the Prince’s, not ours.
In the Prince’s eyes, then, his uncle is a god; of all monarchs, the
most wise, upright, and merciful. Thirty years ago the opinion had
millions of supporters; while millions again were ready to avouch the
exact contrary. It is curious to think of the former difference of
opinion concerning Napoleon; and, in reading his nephew’s rapturous
encomiums of him, one goes back to the days when we ourselves were as
loud and mad in his dispraise. Who does not remember his own personal
hatred and horror, twenty-five years ago, for the man whom we used to
call the “bloody Corsican upstart and assassin?” What stories did we
not believe of him?—what murders, rapes, robberies, not lay to his
charge?—we who were living within a few miles of his territory, and
might, by books and newspapers, be made as well acquainted with his
merits or demerits as any of his own countrymen.
Then was the age when the Idées Napoléoniennes might have passed
through many editions; for while we were thus outrageously bitter, our
neighbors were as extravagantly attached to him by a strange
infatuation—adored him like a god, whom we chose to consider as a
fiend; and vowed that, under his government, their nation had attained
its highest pitch of grandeur and glory. In revenge there existed in
England (as is proved by a thousand authentic documents) a monster so
hideous, a tyrant so ruthless and bloody, that the world’s history
cannot show his parallel. This ruffian’s name was, during the early
part of the French revolution, Pittetcobourg. Pittetcobourg’s
emissaries were in every corner of France; Pittetcobourg’s gold chinked
in the pockets of every traitor in Europe; it menaced the life of the
godlike Robespierre; it drove into cellars and fits of delirium even
the gentle philanthropist Marat; it fourteen times caused the dagger to
be lifted against the bosom of the First Consul, Emperor, and
King,—that first, great, glorious, irresistible, cowardly,
contemptible, bloody hero and fiend, Bonaparte, before mentioned.
On our side of the Channel we have had leisure, long since, to
re-consider our verdict against Napoleon; though, to be sure, we have
not changed our opinion about Pittetcobourg. After five-and-thirty
years all parties bear witness to his honesty, and speak with
affectionate reverence of his patriotism, his genius, and his private
virtue. In France, however, or, at least among certain parties in
France, there has been no such modification of opinion. With the
Republicans, Pittetcobourg is Pittetcobourg still,—crafty, bloody,
seeking whom he may devour; and perfide Albion more perfidious than
ever. This hatred is the point of union between the Republic and the
Empire; it has been fostered ever since, and must be continued by
Prince Louis, if he would hope to conciliate both parties.
With regard to the Emperor, then, Prince Louis erects to his memory as
fine a monument as his wits can raise. One need not say that the
imperial apologist’s opinion should be received with the utmost
caution; for a man who has such a hero for an uncle may naturally be
proud of and partial to him; and when this nephew of the great man
would be his heir likewise, and, hearing his name, step also into his
imperial shoes, one may reasonably look for much affectionate
panegyric. “The empire was the best of empires,” cries the Prince; and
possibly it was; undoubtedly, the Prince thinks it was; but he is the
very last person who would convince a man with the proper suspicious
impartiality. One remembers a certain consultation of politicians which
is recorded in the Spelling-book; and the opinion of that patriotic
sage who avowed that, for a real blameless constitution, an
impenetrable shield for liberty, and cheap defence of nations, there
was nothing like leather.
Let us examine some of the Prince’s article. If we may be allowed
humbly to express an opinion, his leather is not only quite
insufficient for those vast public purposes for which he destines it,
but is, moreover, and in itself, very BAD LEATHER. The hides are poor,
small, unsound slips of skin; or, to drop this cobbling metaphor, the
style is not particularly brilliant, the facts not very startling, and,
as for the conclusions, one may differ with almost every one of them.
Here is an extract from his first chapter, “on governments in
general:”—
“I speak it with regret, I can see but two governments, at this day,
which fulfil the mission that Providence has confided to them; they are
the two colossi at the end of the world; one at the extremity of the
old world, the other at the extremity of the new. Whilst our old
European centre is as a volcano, consuming itself in its crater, the
two nations of the East and the West, march without hesitation, towards
perfection; the one under the will of a single individual, the other
under liberty.
“Providence has confided to the United States of North America the task
of peopling and civilizing that immense territory which stretches from
the Atlantic to the South Sea, and from the North Pole to the Equator.
The Government, which is only a simple administration, has only
hitherto been called upon to put in practice the old adage, Laissez
faire, laissez passer, in order to favor that irresistible instinct
which pushes the people of America to the west.
“In Russia it is to the imperial dynasty that is owing all the vast
progress which, in a century and a half, has rescued that empire from
barbarism. The imperial power must contend against all the ancient
prejudices of our old Europe: it must centralize, as far as possible,
all the powers of the state in the hands of one person, in order to
destroy the abuses which the feudal and communal franchises have served
to perpetuate. The last alone can hope to receive from it the
improvements which it expects.
“But thou, France of Henry IV., of Louis XIV., of Carnot, of
Napoleon—thou, who wert always for the west of Europe the source of
progress, who possessest in thyself the two great pillars of empire,
the genius for the arts of peace and the genius of war—hast thou no
further mission to fulfil? Wilt thou never cease to waste thy force and
energies in intestine struggles? No; such cannot be thy destiny: the
day will soon come, when, to govern thee, it will be necessary to
understand that thy part is to place in all treaties thy sword of
Brennus on the side of civilization.”
These are the conclusions of the Prince’s remarks upon governments in
general; and it must be supposed that the reader is very little wiser
at the end than at the beginning. But two governments in the world
fulfil their mission: the one government, which is no government; the
other, which is a despotism. The duty of France is IN ALL TREATIES to
place her sword of Brennus in the scale of civilization. Without
quarrelling with the somewhat confused language of the latter
proposition, may we ask what, in heaven’s name, is the meaning of all
the three? What is this épée de Brennus? and how is France to use it?
Where is the great source of political truth, from which, flowing pure,
we trace American republicanism in one stream, Russian despotism in
another? Vastly prosperous is the great republic, if you will: if
dollars and cents constitute happiness, there is plenty for all: but
can any one, who has read of the American doings in the late frontier
troubles, and the daily disputes on the slave question, praise the
GOVERNMENT of the States?—a Government which dares not punish homicide
or arson performed before its very eyes, and which the pirates of Texas
and the pirates of Canada can brave at their will? There is no
government, but a prosperous anarchy; as the Prince’s other favorite
government is a prosperous slavery. What, then, is to be the épée de
Brennus government? Is it to be a mixture of the two? “Society,” writes
the Prince, axiomatically, “contains in itself two principles—the one
of progress and immortality, the other of disease and disorganization.”
No doubt; and as the one tends towards liberty, so the other is only to
be cured by order: and then, with a singular felicity, Prince Louis
picks us out a couple of governments, in one of which the common
regulating power is as notoriously too weak, as it is in the other too
strong, and talks in rapturous terms of the manner in which they fulfil
their “providential mission!”
From these considerations on things in general, the Prince conducts us
to Napoleon in particular, and enters largely into a discussion of the
merits of the imperial system. Our author speaks of the Emperor’s
advent in the following grandiose way:—
“Napoleon, on arriving at the public stage, saw that his part was to be
the TESTAMENTARY EXECUTOR of the Revolution. The destructive fire of
parties was extinct; and when the Revolution, dying, but not
vanquished, delegated to Napoleon the accomplishment of her last will,
she said to him, ‘Establish upon solid bases the principal result of my
efforts. Unite divided Frenchmen. Defeat feudal Europe that is leagued
against me. Cicatrize my wounds. Enlighten the nations. Execute that in
width, which I have had to perform in depth. Be for Europe what I have
been for France. And, even if you must water the tree of civilization
with your blood—if you must see your projects misunderstood, and your
sons without a country, wandering over the face of the earth, never
abandon the sacred cause of the French people. Insure its triumph by
all the means which genius can discover and humanity approve.’
“This grand mission Napoleon performed to the end. His task was
difficult. He had to place upon new principles a society still boiling
with hatred and revenge; and to use, for building up, the same
instruments which had been employed for pulling down.
“The common lot of every new truth that arises, is to wound rather than
to convince—rather than to gain proselytes, to awaken fear. For,
oppressed as it long has been, it rushes forward with additional force;
having to encounter obstacles, it is compelled to combat them, and
overthrow them; until, at length, comprehended and adopted by the
generality, it becomes the basis of new social order.
“Liberty will follow the same march as the Christian religion. Armed
with death from the ancient society of Rome, it for a long while
excited the hatred and fear of the people. At last, by force of
martyrdoms and persecutions, the religion of Christ penetrated into the
conscience and the soul; it soon had kings and armies at its orders,
and Constantine and Charlemagne bore it triumphant throughout Europe.
Religion then laid down her arms of war. It laid open to all the
principles of peace and order which it contained; it became the prop of
Government, as it was the organizing element of society. Thus will it
be with liberty. In 1793 it frightened people and sovereigns alike;
then, having clothed itself in a milder garb, IT INSINUATED ITSELF
EVERYWHERE IN THE TRAIN OF OUR BATTALIONS. In 1815 all parties adopted
its flag, and armed themselves with its moral force—covered themselves
with its colors. The adoption was not sincere, and liberty was soon
obliged to reassume its warlike accoutrements. With the contest their
fears returned. Let us hope that they will soon cease, and that liberty
will soon resume her peaceful standards, to quit them no more.
“The Emperor Napoleon contributed more than any one else towards
accelerating the reign of liberty, by saving the moral influence of the
revolution, and diminishing the fears which it imposed. Without the
Consulate and the Empire, the revolution would have been only a grand
drama, leaving grand revolutions but no traces: the revolution would
have been drowned in the counter-revolution. The contrary, however, was
the case. Napoleon rooted the revolution in France, and introduced,
throughout Europe, the principal benefits of the crisis of 1789. To use
his own words, ‘He purified the revolution, he confirmed kings, and
ennobled people.’ He purified the revolution, in separating the truths
which it contained from the passions that, during its delirium,
disfigured it. He ennobled the people in giving them the consciousness
of their force, and those institutions which raise men in their own
eyes. The Emperor may be considered as the Messiah of the new ideas;
for—and we must confess it—in the moments immediately succeeding a
social revolution, it is not so essential to put rigidly into practice
all the propositions resulting from the new theory, but to become
master of the regenerative genius, to identify one’s self with the
sentiments of the people, and boldly to direct them towards the desired
point. To accomplish such a task YOUR FIBRE SHOULD RESPOND TO THAT OF
THE PEOPLE, as the Emperor said; you should feel like it, your
interests should be so intimately raised with its own, that you should
vanquish or fall together.”
Let us take breath after these big phrases,—grand round figures of
speech,—which, when put together, amount like certain other
combinations of round figures to exactly 0. We shall not stop to argue
the merits and demerits of Prince Louis’s notable comparison between
the Christian religion and the Imperial-revolutionary system. There are
many blunders in the above extract as we read it; blundering metaphors,
blundering arguments, and blundering assertions; but this is surely the
grandest blunder of all; and one wonders at the blindness of the
legislator and historian who can advance such a parallel. And what are
we to say of the legacy of the dying revolution to Napoleon?
Revolutions do not die, and, on their death-beds, making fine speeches,
hand over their property to young officers of artillery. We have all
read the history of his rise. The constitution of the year III. was
carried. Old men of the Montagne, disguised royalists, Paris sections,
PITTETCOBOURG, above all, with his money-bags, thought that here was a
fine opportunity for a revolt, and opposed the new constitution in
arms: the new constitution had knowledge of a young officer who would
not hesitate to defend its cause, and who effectually beat the
majority. The tale may be found in every account of the revolution, and
the rest of his story need not be told. We know every step that he
took: we know how, by doses of cannon-balls promptly administered, he
cured the fever of the sections—that fever which another camp-physician
(Menou) declined to prescribe for; we know how he abolished the
Directory; and how the Consulship came; and then the Empire; and then
the disgrace, exile, and lonely death. Has not all this been written by
historians in all tongues?—by memoir-writing pages, chamberlains,
marshals, lackeys, secretaries, contemporaries, and ladies of honor?
Not a word of miracle is there in all this narration; not a word of
celestial missions, or political Messiahs. From Napoleon’s rise to his
fall, the bayonet marches alongside of him: now he points it at the
tails of the scampering “five hundred,”—now he charges with it across
the bloody planks of Arcola—now he flies before it over the fatal plain
of Waterloo.
Unwilling, however, as he may be to grant that there are any spots in
the character of his hero’s government, the Prince is, nevertheless,
obliged to allow that such existed; that the Emperor’s manner of rule
was a little more abrupt and dictatorial than might possibly be
agreeable. For this the Prince has always an answer ready—it is the
same poor one that Napoleon uttered a million of times to his
companions in exile—the excuse of necessity. He WOULD have been very
liberal, but that the people were not fit for it; or that the cursed
war prevented him—or any other reason why. His first duty, however,
says his apologist, was to form a general union of Frenchmen, and he
set about his plan in this wise:—
“Let us not forget, that all which Napoleon undertook, in order to
create a general fusion, he performed without renouncing the principles
of the revolution. He recalled the émigrés, without touching upon the
law by which their goods had been confiscated and sold as public
property. He reestablished the Catholic religion at the same time that
he proclaimed the liberty of conscience, and endowed equally the
ministers of all sects. He caused himself to be consecrated by the
Sovereign Pontiff, without conceding to the Pope’s demand any of the
liberties of the Gallican church. He married a daughter of the Emperor
of Austria, without abandoning any of the rights of France to the
conquests she had made. He reestablished noble titles, without
attaching to them any privileges or prerogatives, and these titles were
conferred on all ranks, on all services, on all professions. Under the
empire all idea of caste was destroyed; no man ever thought of vaunting
his pedigree—no man ever was asked how he was born, but what he had
done.
“The first quality of a people which aspires to liberal government, is
respect to the law. Now, a law has no other power than lies in the
interest which each citizen has to defend or to contravene it. In order
to make a people respect the law, it was necessary that it should be
executed in the interest of all, and should consecrate the principle of
equality in all its extension. It was necessary to restore the prestige
with which the Government had been formerly invested, and to make the
principles of the revolution take root in the public manners. At the
commencement of a new society, it is the legislator who makes or
corrects the manners; later, it is the manners which make the law, or
preserve it from age to age intact.”
Some of these fusions are amusing. No man in the empire was asked how
he was born, but what he had done; and, accordingly, as a man’s actions
were sufficient to illustrate him, the Emperor took care to make a host
of new title-bearers, princes, dukes, barons, and what not, whose rank
has descended to their children. He married a princess of Austria; but,
for all that, did not abandon his conquests—perhaps not actually; but
he abandoned his allies, and, eventually, his whole kingdom. Who does
not recollect his answer to the Poles, at the commencement of the
Russian campaign? But for Napoleon’s imperial father-in-law, Poland
would have been a kingdom, and his race, perhaps, imperial still. Why
was he to fetch this princess out of Austria to make heirs for his
throne? Why did not the man of the people marry a girl of the people?
Why must he have a Pope to crown him—half a dozen kings for brothers,
and a bevy of aides-de-camp dressed out like so many mountebanks from
Astley’s, with dukes’ coronets, and grand blue velvet marshals’ bâtons?
We have repeatedly his words for it. He wanted to create an
aristocracy—another acknowledgment on his part of the Republican
dilemma—another apology for the revolutionary blunder. To keep the
republic within bounds, a despotism is necessary; to rally round the
despotism, an aristocracy must be created; and for what have we been
laboring all this while? for what have bastiles been battered down, and
king’s heads hurled, as a gage of battle, in the face of armed Europe?
To have a Duke of Otranto instead of a Duke de la Tremouille, and
Emperor Stork in place of King Log. O lame conclusion! Is the blessed
revolution which is prophesied for us in England only to end in
establishing a Prince Fergus O’Connor, or a Cardinal Wade, or a Duke
Daniel Whittle Harvey? Great as those patriots are, we love them better
under their simple family names, and scorn titles and coronets.
At present, in France, the delicate matter of titles seems to be better
arranged, any gentleman, since the Revolution, being free to adopt any
one he may fix upon; and it appears that the Crown no longer confers
any patents of nobility, but contents itself with saying, as in the
case of M. de Pontois, the other day, “Le Roi trouve convenable that
you take the title of,” &c.
To execute the legacy of the revolution, then; to fulfil his
providential mission; to keep his place,—in other words, for the
simplest are always the best,—to keep his place, and to keep his
Government in decent order, the Emperor was obliged to establish a
military despotism, to re-establish honors and titles; it was
necessary, as the Prince confesses, to restore the old prestige of the
Government, in order to make the people respect it; and he adds—a truth
which one hardly would expect from him,—“At the commencement of a new
society, it is the legislator who makes and corrects the manners;
later, it is the manners which preserve the laws.” Of course, and here
is the great risk that all revolutionizing people run—they must tend to
despotism; “they must personify themselves in a man,” is the Prince’s
phrase; and, according as is his temperament or disposition—according
as he is a Cromwell, a Washington, or a Napoleon—the revolution becomes
tyranny or freedom, prospers or falls.
Somewhere in the St. Helena memorials, Napoleon reports a message of
his to the Pope. “Tell the Pope,” he says to an archbishop, “to
remember that I have six hundred thousand armed Frenchmen, qui
marcheront avec moi, pour moi, et comme moi.” And this is the legacy of
the revolution, the advancement of freedom! A hundred volumes of
imperial special pleading will not avail against such a speech as
this—one so insolent, and at the same time so humiliating, which gives
unwittingly the whole of the Emperor’s progress, strength, and
weakness. The six hundred thousand armed Frenchmen were used up, and
the whole fabric falls; the six hundred thousand are reduced to sixty
thousand, and straightway all the rest of the fine imperial scheme
vanishes: the miserable senate, so crawling and abject but now, becomes
of a sudden endowed with a wondrous independence; the miserable sham
nobles, sham empress, sham kings, dukes, princes, chamberlains, pack up
their plumes and embroideries, pounce upon what money and plate they
can lay their hands on, and when the allies appear before Paris, when
for courage and manliness there is yet hope, when with fierce marches
hastening to the relief of his capital, bursting through ranks upon
ranks of the enemy, and crushing or scattering them from the path of
his swift and victorious despair, the Emperor at last is at home,—where
are the great dignitaries and the lieutenant-generals of the empire?
Where is Maria Louisa, the Empress Eagle, with her little callow king
of Rome? Is she going to defend her nest and her eaglet? Not she.
Empress-queen, lieutenant-general, and court dignitaries, are off on
the wings of all the winds—profligati sunt, they are away with the
money-bags, and Louis Stanislas Xavier rolls into the palace of his
fathers.
With regard to Napoleon’s excellences as an administrator, a
legislator, a constructor of public works, and a skilful financier, his
nephew speaks with much diffuse praise, and few persons, we suppose,
will be disposed to contradict him. Whether the Emperor composed his
famous code, or borrowed it, is of little importance; but he
established it, and made the law equal for every man in France except
one. His vast public works and vaster wars were carried on without new
loans or exorbitant taxes; it was only the blood and liberty of the
people that were taxed, and we shall want a better advocate than Prince
Louis to show us that these were not most unnecessarily and lavishly
thrown away. As for the former and material improvements, it is not
necessary to confess here that a despotic energy can effect such far
more readily than a Government of which the strength is diffused in
many conflicting parties. No doubt, if we could create a despotical
governing machine, a steam autocrat,—passionless, untiring, and
supreme,—we should advance further, and live more at ease than under
any other form of government. Ministers might enjoy their pensions and
follow their own devices; Lord John might compose histories or
tragedies at his leisure, and Lord Palmerston, instead of racking his
brains to write leading articles for Cupid, might crown his locks with
flowers, and sing [Greek text omitted], his natural Anacreontics; but
alas! not so: if the despotic Government has its good side, Prince
Louis Napoleon must acknowledge that it has its bad, and it is for this
that the civilized world is compelled to substitute for it something
more orderly and less capricious. Good as the Imperial Government might
have been, it must be recollected, too, that since its first fall, both
the Emperor and his admirer and would-be successor have had their
chance of re-establishing it. “Fly from steeple to steeple” the eagles
of the former did actually, and according to promise perch for a while
on the towers of Notre Dame. We know the event: if the fate of war
declared against the Emperor, the country declared against him too;
and, with old Lafayette for a mouthpiece, the representatives of the
nation did, in a neat speech, pronounce themselves in permanence, but
spoke no more of the Emperor than if he had never been. Thereupon the
Emperor proclaimed his son the Emperor Napoleon II. “L’Empereur est
mort, vive l’Empereur!” shouted Prince Lucien. Psha! not a soul echoed
the words: the play was played, and as for old Lafayette and his
“permanent” representatives, a corporal with a hammer nailed up the
door of their spouting-club, and once more Louis Stanislas Xavier
rolled back to the bosom of his people.
In like manner Napoleon III. returned from exile, and made his
appearance on the frontier. His eagle appeared at Strasburg, and from
Strasburg advanced to the capital; but it arrived at Paris with a
keeper, and in a post-chaise; whence, by the orders of the sovereign,
it was removed to the American shores, and there magnanimously let
loose. Who knows, however, how soon it may be on the wing again, and
what a flight it will take?