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Whether France would have accepted his particular form of principle, is a doubtful point; but, as she never had the chance of expressing an opinion on it, we have no right to be quite sure that she would have rejected it. She might possibly have been led, how ever improbable it may appear, with that love of contradiction of all certainties which is peculiar to her, to accept a king who claims sovereignty as a birthright, and who would regard his subjects as his children, not as his electors. But that eventuality, feeble as it was, had no opportunity of developing itself; the one principle has disappeared; ambitions, appetites, and passions alone are left. It may be that in the intensity of his own convictions, the Comte de Chambord has never realised what Radicalism is, and what is the future state to which he has left France to drift. He, like a good many other of our contemporaries, may be totally unable to comprehend that the people is beginning to claim power as a permanent and inherent right: he knows that it seizes power sometimes in moments of what is called revolution; but he has seen it relapse again on each occasion to obedience; and he is probably incapable of supposing that these spasmodic risings have been but the first symptoms of a permanent condition, and that they are destined to assume some day a durable and defined form. It is in this adoption of revolution as the fixed character of society that the future of French Radicalism manifestly lies; -only the word revolution will, in that case, lose its present transitory signification, and will acquire a new sense, as descriptive of a normal and lasting state; it may indeed, at some future period, become a principle in its turn.

These views may appear exaggerated to those who are unacquainted practically with the actual situation of French politics, and who form their judgment solely from the imaginary expositions of the subject with which the newspapers soothe their readers; but they will be confirmed by such of us as have been in a position to verify the realities of the case. Events have marched on rapidly beneath the surface since the 31st of October, and the Radicals are more convinced than ever that their time is coming. No one seriously supposes that Maréchal Macmahon will really remain President of the Republic for the seven years which were voted to him on the 19th November: the Conservatives have been forced to take refuge in this plan, because there was nothing else for them to fall back upon; but not one of them can believe, in his own heart, that the provisoire is going to last. It will necessarily be replaced before very long by a Government which, whether it bear the name of Empire or Republic, will be thoroughly democratic, and which will be but a stepping-stone to something far more Radical later on. Ultimately, perhaps, when popularised Imperialism has been found to be a failure, when Radicalism is beginning to disappoint its own adherents, and when more than the usual murdering and fighting has been gone through in the towns, and probably in the provinces as well, then France will grow very weary, and may perhaps revert to her old race of kings, who, by that time, will have ceased to be represented by the Comte de Chambord.

Meanwhile the one vague possibility of escaping, or, at all events, of postponing all these results, has been thrown away. Legitimacy is destroyed; Conservatism is frightened, and seeks shelter behind

the illusory prolongation of the Marshal's powers; Radicalism is shouting more violently than ever; the Empire is coming, with its hand stretched out to its "people." These are the results which the retreat of the Comte de Chambord has produced in France.

It was not for this that M. Thiers was expelled on the 24th of May; it was not for this that the Comte de Paris went to Frohsdorf on the 5th of August; it was not for this that the fusion was effected, that old rivalries were forgotten and forgiven, that the Royal House of France once more proclaimed an undisputed chief, and that two factions which had contended for forty years accepted an eager peace. It was for France that all this was done; it was to serve her better that these sacrifices were made; it was in her interest that these conditions were adopted. And yet when all this was brought about, when these seemingly impossible effects had been produced, when the time for action came, then the leader shrank from his deluded followers, and left them, five days before the Chamber met, to choose another plan of action,-to invent another means of safety. To repeat the words of M. John Lemoinne,"Whom has he filled with joy, and whom has he filled with sadness?"

And now let us look at the consequences of this breakdown in their relation to ourselves, and in their influence on the cause of Conservatism throughout Europe. It can scarcely be pretended that these consequences will apply to France alone; that the results which have already followed there on the withdrawal of the Comte de Chambord, will continue to be purely local; for it becomes more evident each year that there is community between nations on all social questions, and that what concerns our neighbour's

peace concerns ours too. It is true that there exists no direct proof of this in the ordinary experiences amongst which we live in England; but when we look attentively abroad we find conclusive evidence of the principle. We forget that our practical acquaintance with the progress of democracy is, as yet, very limited; that it has not enabled us to acquire much personal knowledge of its real nature; and that nearly all we have learned about it has been gathered from newspaper reports of what is happening elsewhere. We grow up with the impression that we are beyond the reach of revolutions; that our people are too loyal and our Government too wise for dangers to become possible amongst us: so we look on at the difficulties of others in calm security, as disinterested spectators, with the conviction that, however disagreeable all these things may be to Frenchmen, they do not matter much to us. This training blinds us to the true bearings of contemporaneous foreign history; it disassociates us from the common interests of the world; its effect is to persistently withdraw us from external sympathies, to deprive us of the power of recognising that other people's trials may some day be our own. of non-intervention has confirmed all this. Just as it has lost us our former influence on the Continent, and with it the right of counsel which we once possessed there, so it has increased our difficulty of rightly comprehending what occurs in Europe. With a strange misconception of their duty, the leading organs of the press encourage us in these dangerous errors. The professors of the art of government who write articles tell us, nearly every day, that we are altogether outside the revolutionary movement which is now absorbing France and Spain. They seem to look at these two coun

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tries as museums of comparative anatomy applied to politics, in which they study gratis, and prepare materials for lessons to us on the noble cause of liberty. The Radicals, who are destroying elsewhere the very institutions which these same writers defend in England, are admired by them as true patriots; while the little-minded, error-guided Conservatives who presume to contradict them, are held up to our disdain because they try to keep the Radicals out of office. As this is the fashion in which the men who have the responsibility of guiding English opinion understand and discharge their task, it will be curious to note what their tone will be when their teaching has recoiled upon themselves; when we, in our turn, are added to the museum; and when leaders in the New York Herald applaud our victorious Radicals, as the Times' and the 'Saturday Review' applaud the French Left now. Nothing is more easy than to deny that this day will ever arrive; but there are some few amongst us, wiser than their generation, who see it on its road, who view our future anxiously. There are some few amongst us-and they are precisely those whose words we are accustomed to listen to with deference, and whose guidance we are accustomed to accept-who look gloomily ahead; who are not blinded by the habit of imaginary safety; who, by position and education, are enabled to appreciate the connexity of the destructive causes which are now everywhere at work, and to recognise that they are producing silently, in England as elsewhere, an equal connexity of result. It is these few alone, who, thus far, can appreciate correctly all the consequences of the conduct of the Comte de Chambord; for they alone have acquired the experience without which men cannot judge of the

relations between international causes and international effects.

They know that the time is surely coming when we too shall commence the battle between classes ; when we, in our turn, shall have to face the problem which France has vainly tried to solve for nearly a hundred years. They know that the future combats of the world will not be between nations only; they know that rivalries between States and peoples will continue, but not alone; that the ambition of kings and statesmen will still lead us on to wars; that the pride of contending races will go on marking maps with battle-fields: but that, with all this, we shall have other conflicts too; that, with all this, each country will some day have the home fight to fight as well, and that England will then be no exception to the rule. It is prudent to believe this, to look at it well beforehand; to study, while we have still time, the true nature of the unsatisfied and eager instincts, untrained and unrestrained, which are surging upwards all around us; and to consider how we can wisely combat them before they have attained the height-as they have already done elsewhere-of fierce appetites, growing with their own hunger and excited by their own thirst-of bitter envies, of jealousies which yearn for vengeance. All this is to be seen now outside our shores, and not for the first time. It began in '93, and, at each crisis of French history since, it has burst out again, in varying shapes, with varying violence, but always with new claims, with fresh demands, with growing aspirations, till now, in our day, democracy is almost mistress of France and Spain, and promises to become some day the mistress of the world. That day will come all the sooner if our chiefs desert us as the Comte de Chambord has deserted France.

Are we to stand by in silence till our turn arrives? Are we to look on, like spectators in a Roman amphitheatre, at other people being devoured, in the pleasant faith that we are outside the reach of gnashing teeth? Are we to sit still in what we erroneously suppose to be peaceful selfishness, until our own lions are ready to open their mouths upon us?

The Radicals have shown us how to work together for a cause. They saw, as soon as their theories began to assume a form, that the principle of concentration is not limited in its application; that what is a force to Governments may be a force to the enemies of Governments; that the common action which makes nations one-the grouping which gives power to alliances between States-the association which fortifies nationalities and races-may be utilised for attack as well as for defence. So they proceeded, from their very origin, to unite their distant bands, to join the extreme Radicals of the world into one solid and regularly increasing body, animated by the same will, bound together for the same end, stimulated by the same desires. In all this they have shown a wisdom which we should do well to copy; and as, in this century of constantly improving weapons, each side profits by the inventions of the other, we should lose no time in adapting the arms of our antagonists to the necessities of our own action. It may be impracticable to constitute a Conservative International for the protection of society; it is even probable that such an organisation, if it could be effected, would be of scarcely any real use. But union at home is within our grasp; there we have but to imitate our adversaries; to form ourselves, as they have done, into a solid legion, ardent, but disciplined and obedient, acting to

gether in hearty co-operation, in resolute unity of object.

Thus far we have done nothing of the kind. With calm indifference to each other's dangers, Conservatives have remained isolated, not only between one country and another, but even in the same country between themselves. Their present union in France, weak, trembling, and disintegrated as it is, dates only from the 24th of May; it is but a half-instinctive, awkward, momentary effort at self-defence, as sheep huddle together in a snowstorm; and their want of real cohesiveness is proved by the fact that, directly a glimpse of sunshine cheers their hearts, they break away, each in his own direction, each pursuing his own dream. In England we have not got even so far as France; we know that our constitution protects us against the consequences of royal incapacities or of royal follies; we do not trouble ourselves about the future; we have never yet thought of standing back to back against the coming wind; we say that it will not blow our way,-all we care for is the present. We shall have to pay for this indifference some day, as France and Spain are paying for it now; only the payment will grow heavier and heavier as the demands of the other side increase with success and time. They have got a long start of us, and have made the most of it, with a skill which we may regret, but must envy and admire. If we had shown the same energy we should have thrown them backwards twenty years; we should not have destroyed them, but we should have weakened and delayed them, have gained time, and have improved our own position in proportion as we should have diminished theirs.

The blow which French Conservatism has just received makes the

whole cause stagger; it fills our enemies with joy, while we look round half-dazed, and mistrust each other. A Prince who demands sovereignty as a divine right,-who bases his theory of being on the grandest ideas of duty-who, by the very nature of his position, is an obligatory chieftain of Conservatism,-forgets, in the immensity of his pride, that he has duties to discharge as well as rights to claim. This Prince abandons the very cause which he says was intrusted to him by Heaven at his birth, because he will govern absolutely or not at all. And he calls this by the name of fidelity to his ancestors, to himself, and to the ideas he represents! Kings must learn, if they do not already know it, that they are the first Conservatives in the world; that the time has passed when monarchs reigned by their own will alone; that a tide is rising against which they are bound to lead us on; and that, if they would not be the first to fall, they must be the first to fight.

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To those who are less advanced in the schooling of our epoch; to those who, by old habit, by indifference, by prejudice, or by ignorance, have retained the convictions of their fathers; to those who imagine, as so many of us do, that England is beyond the reach of the influences which are at work throughout the Continent, and who, for any of these reasons, are incapable of following the more practical members of our party in their appreciation of the nature of the strife which is looming everywhere before us, to all these the only counsel to be given is, Go and study Radicalism on the spot, in France. Until they have attained a correct idea of what Radicalism really is, of the total destruction which it is pursuing under the lying mask of liberty, they will continue to be influenced by the ut

terly false theories of the press; they will remain unfit to measure the realities of the position as a whole; they will even be unable to pronounce a judgment on the relatively limited question which is before us here.

And yet it is difficult to admit that even the most prejudiced of us all can fail to see, instinctively, that something damaging to us will result from this attitude of the Comte de Chambord. Stanch loyalty to old ideas, steadfast holding to old convictions, unvarying persistence in inherited opinions, ought not to blind us to the evidence of facts. Our social organisation is in such a nervous state, it has become so sensitive to accidental influences, that the slightest shock disturbs it; how then can it be supposed that it can remain uninfluenced by the discouragement in which the party of defence is now plunged in France? Until the 31st October we all believed that the cause of Princes and of Conservatism was virtually the same. There might be differences of individual impression, or accidents of individual ambition, which, at certain moments, might bring about temporary divergences of object; but, with those small exceptions, the principle of obligatory unity between the two seemed absolute and indispensable. We have just learnt, for the first time, that this apparent principle was not a principle at all; that what we had, so far, taken to be a necessity, was nothing but an expedient; that what we had imagined to be a law was merely a caprice. The Comte de Chambord had asserted himself for years as the first Conservative in Europe; he had indeed gone far beyond Conservatism; we may have thought that, for times like ours, and for necessities such as we have now to deal with, he was somewat excessive-we may have thought that his theory of

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