CONCLUSION.
Let not France deceive herself. Not all the experiments she may try, not
all the revolutions she may make, or suffer to be made, will ever
emancipate her from the necessary and inevitable conditions of social
tranquillity and good government. She may refuse to admit them, and may
suffer without measure or limit from her refusal, but she cannot escape
from them.
We have tried everything:--Republic--Empire--Constitutional Monarchy. We
are beginning our experiments anew. To what must we ascribe their ill
success? In our own times, before our own eyes, in three of
the greatest nations in the world, these three same forms of
government--Constitutional Monarchy in England, the Empire in Russia,
and the Republic in North America--endure and prosper. Have we the
monopoly of all impossibilities?
Yes; so long as we remain in the chaos in which we are plunged, in the
name, and by the slavish idolatry, of Democracy; so long as we can see
nothing in society but Democracy, as if that were its sole ingredient;
so long as we seek in government nothing but the domination of
Democracy, as if that alone had the right and the power to govern.
On these terms the Republic is equally impossible as the Constitutional
Monarchy, and the Empire, as the Republic; for all regular and stable
government is impossible.
And liberty--legal and energetic liberty--is no less impossible than
stable and regular government.
The world has seen great and illustrious communities reduced to this
deplorable condition; incapable of supporting any legal and energetic
liberty, or any regular and stable government; condemned to interminable
and sterile political oscillations, from the various shades and forms of
anarchy to the equally various forms of despotism. For a heart capable
of any feeling of pride or dignity, I cannot conceive a more cruel
suffering than to be born in such an age. Nothing remains but to retire
to the sanctuary of domestic life, and the prospects of religion. The
joys and the sacrifices, the labours and the glories of public life
exist no more.
Such is not, God be praised, the state of France; such will not be the
closing scene of her long and glorious career of civilization,--of all
her exertions, conquests, hopes, and sufferings. France is full of life
and vigour. She has not mounted so high, to descend in the name of
equality to so low a level. She possesses the elements of a good
political organization. She has numerous classes of citizens,
enlightened and respected, already accustomed to manage the business of
their country, or prepared to undertake it. Her soil is covered with an
industrious and intelligent population, who detest anarchy, and ask only
to live and to labour in peace. There is an abundance of virtue in the
bosoms of her families, and of good feeling in the hearts of her sons.
We have wherewithal to struggle against the evil that devours us. But
the evil is immense. There are no words wherein to describe, no measure
wherewith to measure it. The suffering and the shame it inflicts upon us
are slight, compared to those it prepares for us if it endures. And who
will say that it cannot endure, when all the passions of the wicked, all
the extravagances of the mad, all the weaknesses of the good, concur to
foment it? Let all the sane forces of France then unite to combat it.
They will not be too many, and they must not wait till it is too late.
Their united strength will more than once bend under the weight of their
work, and France, ere she can be saved, will still need to pray that God
would protect her.
THE END.
LONDON:
Printed by W. CLOWES and SONS,
Stamford Street.