proved so ingrainedly and incurably bad, that we scarcely see that any choice was left them. Therefore, though not republicans ourselves, it is from no dislike of that form of government, still less from any admiration of the government it has superseded, that we are led to augur ill for France, but from the character and condition of the people from the mode in which the revolution was effected from all the proceedings of the provisional government-and from the conduct and manifested animus of the nation, ever since the memorable 24th of February. - from their governors: the French" cashier" their governors, and become governors themselves. But the French governmental administration is a machine of tremendous power, of immense extent, of universal interpenetration. He who seizes the reins of government in France, finds himself- owing to the centralization which is its essence-absolute master of every functionary in every department of administration throughout that vast empire. Through these functionaries he finds himself invested with almost uncontrolled power over every one of his fellowIn the first place, there does not seem to be countrymen. He is at the head of the police, now in France, any more than at any previous justice, gendarmine, finance, education, not period, the slightest conception of, or care for, merely in Paris, but in the remotest and obwhat we in England call personal liberty-the scurest corner of the land. He finds himself, liberty of the subject. Their only idea of lib- by the accident of his position, a despot, an auerty seems to be equality. Political rights-tocrat; and it is to ask a miracle of human the right of suffrage the right to a free press the abolition of the exclusive rights and privileges of others, they comprehend and contend for. But individual freedom - the right of unfettered action and speech-the right of every man to do what he likes so long as he interferes not with the equivalent rights of others - exemption from all unnecessary restraint, and from all authority but that of recorded or adjudicated law-security against the illegal exercise of power by the agents of the government- these, the French do not ask for, and seem not to comprehend the importance of. Not only have they no habeas corpus, but in all their many opportunities they have never, we believe, asked for it. The constitution of 1789, 1793, 1795, the 18th of Brumaire, the restoration, the hundred days, 1830, all passed away without conferring this inestimable boon-this sine qua non of freedom; and the result is, that never in their wildest days of license have Frenchmen enjoyed half the liberty half the security from, or security against, the tyranny of their sovereign or their neighbour, as the poorest and meanest Englishman has possessed for the last century and a half. To all appearance the revolution of 1848 will pass away like its predecessors, without having bestowed on the French nation this easy, this simple, this grand, yet apparently this undesired achievement. Again, in France (if we except a short period in 1789), there has never been a struggle for liberty: what have been termed such, have, in sad and sober truth, been simply struggles for the administration of a tyranny. The centralized form of their government is greatly to blame for this. To the French imagination, the simplest, shortest, and easiest way of conquering their liberty, when oppression has become unbearable, has always been to seize upon the reins of power. Other nations wring concessions nature, to expect him not to use this despotic power; it is to ask little less than a miracle from a man who has sprung from an oppressed caste unused to the sweets, uninured to the difficulties of rule-to expect him not to use it despotically. Moreover, the very habits of the nation, the very nature of the organization, force the use of this power upon him. The functionaries, throughout the country, feeling themselves only portions of one great machine accustomed to refer every thing to their head at Paris-constantly and naturally apply to him for orders, and he is almost compelled to act. Whatever party, therefore, assumes the government in France, find themselves necessarily, and ipso facto, invested with supreme power, and are expected, called upon, compelled to use it; or the machine of administration would stand still. How completely this notion—that it is in the power, and is the duty of the government to do every thing-is rooted in the minds both of the rulers and the ruled - has been shown with tragic and ludicrous clearness during the last month. We have seen deputations from workmen to ask the provisional government to fix the hours of labor, and the rate of wages-from omnibus drivers to ask them to decide the price of fares - from merchants and tradesmen to postpone the dates of bills of exchange — from manufacturers for loans on the security of their goods-from railway employés to ask for a compulsory participation in the profits of capital to which they have not contributed—and, finally, from students to demand the dismissal of an obnoxious professor, and the exclusion of cosmography and natural history from their list of lessons! Few of our readers, we believe, have any idea of the extent to which this system of centralization has been carried in France, or what ramified and far reaching power it puts into the hands of the actual rulers, whoever they may be. The following table will aid them to form a just conception of this gigantic machine. It is calculated that there are dependent on the francs. whole cycle of tyranny, spent all the resources of despotism, repeated and exhausted all the obsolete contrivances and low stratagems of arbitrary power. They have seized on property, interfered with contracts, threatened the rich, swamped the respectable, broken faith with the Minister of the Interior 203,900 employés receiving 46,000,000 national creditor, influenced elections by terror Justice .30,280 16,000.000 ...25,000,000 12,000,000 and chicanery, and displayed, in a word, not 20,000,000 only all the ignorance, but all the vices of a 145,000,000 fierce and overbearing democracy. Therefore, we have no hopes for France. 81,000,000 8,000,000 5,000,000 308,000,000 This is the system which a poet, an historian, an editor, an astronomer, and workman, are suddenly called on to administer- an army of 600,000 agents, and a purse of 12,000,000l. sterling. These two remarkable facts, then the centralized system of administration which pervades all France, and the utter absence of all conception of the true nature of personal liberty, joined to another feature of the national character, as prominent and yet more deplorable, namely, an entire want of that perception of what is due to others, that clear sense of the rights of others, which lies at the basis of all real freedom-will explain what else would appear so inexplicable - the astounding proceedings of the provisional government, since they took the helm of state into their hands. Their course was compara- | tively clear; the limits of their sphere of action were defined by the nature of their position, and even by their very name; their duties were confined to the simple tasks of preserving public order, keeping the administrative machine at work, and arranging the details of the mode in which the national will should express itself. It was not for them, mere administrators ad interim, but for the nation, to decide for a republic or a monarchy. It was not for them, but for the nation, to enact new laws and abolish old ones. Yet they have issued edicts, and decrees without end; with a profusion, a peremptoriness, and a haste which neither Napoleon nor Robespierre could have surpassed. They have passed laws, proprio motu, of their own autocratic will, which demanded the gravest deliberation, and involved the most momentous consequences. They have issued ukases affecting the very foundation of the social system. They have imposed new and additional taxation in a most unequal and unjustifiable form. Their very first acts were invasions of the freedom of the subject, more flagrant and undisguised than any of those by which Louis Philippe and Charles X. were held to have deservedly forfeited their thrones. In one short month they have run round the The refusal to pay the depositors at the savings'-banks, and the suspension of cash payments at the Bank of France, were measures sufficiently discreditable, but which might be defended on the plea of necessity-a necessity, however, which we must not forget was wholly created by their own wild proceedings. But the proceedings which we view with the greatest disapprobation and alarm, both on account of the animus which they manifest, and of the scenes which they so vividly recall, are the barefaced resolutions displayed in the decree for the re-organization of the National Guard, to swamp the influence of the respectable and educated classes by a forced amalgamation with the mob; the evident determination to scruple at no means for suppressing the expression of opinion on the part of those who love order, who fear the government of the lowest classes, and who may be supposed to be influenced by a regard to character and rank, as evinced in the famous circular of the Minister of the Interior; the leading articles which have appeared in journals known to be closely connected with members of the government, couched in no covert language, menacing emigrants, natives, and even foreigners, with the indignation of their country, and threatening those capitalists who refused to subscribe, or who did not subscribe largely enough, to the new banks of discount, with public denunciation; and, finally, the firm and almost contemptuous tone in which the government have met the remonstrances of the middle classes, contrasted with the gentleness and timidity with which they have submitted to the overbearing dictation of the mob of workmen. These things show that the rock on which the liberty of France was wrecked in 1792 is still as prominent and as perilous as then. Therefore, it is, that we have no hope for France. But it is the unchanged national character of the French which most inclines us to despair. Such as it was in 1790, such, in many of its features, it is still. It may appear a paradoxical assertion respecting a people so notoriously brave as the French; but, as a general fact, they seem utterly destitute of moral courage. Daring even to rashness in the field-unshrinking even to levity upon the scaffold — bold even to audacity in public, en messe, and where bravery can be theatrically displayed they have individually, it would seem, no civil courage. They dare not face the disapprobation and dislike of their countrymen. They dare not differ from the prevalent current of opinion. They cannot swim against the stream. They are in every thing the victims and slaves of the prevailing fashion. They dare not risk being in a minority. Hence the suddenness and apparent unanimity of all political movements throughout France. Hence they can always be governed by a small minority Hence they will generally be governed by the boldest and most desperate among themselves. The wild, the bold, the inconsiderate, the destitute, are the only ones who do not wait to consider whether others will support them. They take advantage of the general discontent, and, by a timely and well contrived emeute, possess themselves of the reins of government. Their boldness gives them power. No one knows how few they are, but only think how numerous they may be, and most people measure their number by their daring. Every one fears to be left behind if he delays to join them; it becomes a rush and a scramble to see who will be first to swear allegiance to the self-elected government of yesterday; and thus it suddenly finds itself possessed of supreme power, and may retain it till its conduct has made some other party desperate enough to rise against it without calculating chances, when it falls to pieces like a rope of sand. Such has been the history of every popular government in France. Such is, and will be, we anticipate, the history of the present one. It is, we believe, supported heartily by a very small minority of the population. Putting aside the ouvriers of Paris, Lyons, and Rouen, its real bona fide friends, we do not believe comprise one-tenth of the people. With this conviction, it will be readily conceived that among all the breathless transactions which made up the revolution of February, 1848, we regard, as one of the most disquieting and discreditable, the almost instant, unreserved, undeliberating adhesion with which the provisional government was hailed throughout the country. However unpopular the old monarchy may have been, it is impossible to believe that all parties in France wished in their hearts for a republic; still less, that all believed MM. Lamartine, Arago, Louis Blanc, and Albert, the fittest men to guide the vessel of the state. Yet no sooner was the formation of this ministry announced in Paris, and the news spread by telegraph through the departments, than every one hastened to fall prostrate at its feet. Without even waiting to see what its first measures would be without stop ping to consider whether the morals or the ability of its members qualified them for the tremendous task they had undertaken-public bodies, private individuals, marshals, admirals, prefects, princes, deputies- at once, by post, by telegraph, and in person rushed to swear allegiance to the unknown and untried novelty; and the same week which saw the monarchy omnipotent and overthrown, saw also the republic conceived, improvised, installed, announced, acknowledged, and supreme, throughout the length and breadth of the land. Therefore we have no hopes for France. Not only does there seem to be no deliberation, no exercise of individual judgment in France; but neither does there seem to be any power or spirit of resistance, or of self-defence. The edicts of a temporary and self-appointed ministry are submitted to by the first bodies in the empire, as humbly and unremonstratingly as if they were the unappealable decrees of fate. The provisional government decrees, in the name of equality, that no monuments shall be erected over the graves of the departed— that all shall take their last sleep in one undistinguishable crowd. An edict which thus tramples upon all the most tender and sacred feelings of our nature, which brutally forbids that tribute which in all ages affection has yearned to pay to the relics of departed love, and which generous admiration has felt proud to offer at the shrines of translated excellence and vanished freedom, is obeyed with meek and unmurmuring pusillanimity. How would such an edict be received in England? It would be instantaneously fatal to the government which should dare to promulgate it, and to the future career of every individual composing it. Again, the provisional government decrees the abolition of all titles; and the peers, to a man, lay them down without a murmur. Why, were such a decree issued in England, every peer in the nobility would spend the last drop of his blood in defence even of such unreal honors. And can it be imagined for a moment that all, or most, of the French noblesse, value their titles and decorations as nothing, or agree in their hearts with the spirit of the order which commands their annihilation? No: but the pluck, the courage, is wanting to remonstrate or resist. Therefore, it is, that we have no hopes for France. One other most discouraging feature in the social aspect of France at the present moment, and which prevails, also, to a great extent in the sister republic of America, is the singular absence of all great men. In all turbulent times in other countries—in the first revolution, even, in France-distinguished men sprung up, as it were, by magic, and in crowds; men, it is true, "darkly wise," and rudely and irregularly | tematic corruption of the late government, un"great," but still possessed of many of the ele- dermined all that the regency and Louis XV. ments of real grandeur, and many of the quali- had left undestroyed of that nice sense of honties of mighty leaders. There were Barnave, or and scrupulous care of character which was Lafayette, Roland, Vergniaud, Danton, Carnot, at one time proverbially distinctive of the French and the greatest and wildest of all, Mirabeau. nobility. That "sensibility of principle, that Now, there is no centre, no rallying point, no chastity of honor, which felt stain like a wound," salient character, no great name, standing out has had a melancholy funeral oration pronounced from the crowd, to which men may look for over its grave, by the ambassador Bresson, the guidance and salvation. As for the second-rate general officer Cubieres, the cabinet minister leaders of the chambers, the men who passed for Teste, and the Duke de Choiseul Praslin; and, great under the old regime-Thiers, Odillon unhappily, religion has not stepped in to fill the Barrot, and their colleagues-they are gone, place left vacant by the demise of a sensitive lost, hushed in the stillness of this universal me- regard to reputation. diocrity. Lamartine, alone, with his brilliant fancy, his elegant culture, his poetic visions, his indomitable courage, affords a relief to the eye, amid the countless platitudes around him. The French will answer, that in this very absence of eminent and great men lies their safety and their glory that great men are dangerous that in a republic of which equality is the basis and the watchword, they are not wanted, and would be out of place. But they have yet to learn that it is only among a people where the mass are reasonably good and moderately wise, that great men can be safely dispensed with. No nation, no government, can exist in safety and in honor without the guidance and support of a vast amount of wisdom and virtue; and if this wisdom and virtue does not pervade and vivify the mass, it must be concentrated in the men who are to govern and control them. Where it is dispersed through a whole people, a democracy becomes possible, reasonable, and safe; where it is confined to a few, nature calls unmistakeably for an aristocracy. On this account, above all others, therefore, do we despair of the present government of France. A republican form of government is, perhaps, theoretically, the most perfect; it seems, more than any other, to meet the requirements of bare reason. But for a republic to be either safe or stable, three conditions are necessary: a pervading, generally prevalent sense of justice and morality; a vivid idea, at least, if not a habit of municipality, or self-government; and material well-being, or a steady progress towards it, on the part of the lower classes. Now, all these elements of security and hope are wanting in France. 1. It is a painful, and may seem an uncharitable, statement, but we think it is impossible to shut our eyes to the truth, that a profound demoralization, of one kind or another, prevails through both the higher and lower classes of society in France. The disorders and disorganization of the close of the last century, and the first fifteen years of this, added to the sys Among the people we perceive a moral deficiency of another kind. They do not seem possessed of that rectitude of feeling, that sense of justice, that quick perception and ready acknowledgment of the rights of others, without which democracy cannot fail to become the most grinding and intolerable of all tyrannies. Their interference with the relations of creditor and debtor- their behaviour to the English workmen and to their own National Guard - have shown this deficiency in the most glaring manner. It is, perhaps, too much to expect from the people that "charity which seeketh not her own;" but without that strict sense of justice which forbears to seek it by trampling upon the rights of others, no republic can, or ought to endure. A sense of duty and a sense of justice pervading the community, constitute the sine qua non of a stable and respectable democracy. Its very foundation is national morality. 2. Real and efficient, not merely nominal, municipal institutions, seem essential to instruct and practise a people in habits of self-government. If they have not been experienced in the administration of parish affairs, they will rarely be competent to undertake the administration of an empire. England, America, and Switzerland, are essentially municipal. What we have termed the habit of municipality, pervades all the ideas and social practices of the people. In France it is quite otherwise. The government there is a bureaucracy. The people have never governed themselves, even during the most levelling periods of their democracies; they are governed by the minister at Paris, through his infinitely numerous agents and subordinates. Every license is granted by the central authority. Every official throughout the empireevery prefect, mayor, notary, tobacco dealer, throughout France, is appointed by a minister at Paris, and can be dismissed by him; and as long as this continues to be the case, we do not conceive how either stability or real freedom is to be secured. Republican institutions, and a centralized administration, involve ideas radical- | pations, against one third in England, the proly contradictory and hostile. duce per acre, with an equal soil and a far superior climate, is only one half what it is with us that already the southern provinces annually import grain to a large amount that the food of the people has been for a long time steadily deteriorating, till they are rapidly ap proaching to the potatoe diet of the Irish that live stock, the basis of all good farming, is diminishing in an alarming ratio- that nearly all the cavalry horses are obliged to be imported from abroad, so wretched is the native breed — that the consumption of butchers' meat in Paris (and we may conclude in other parts of France likewise) is only one third what it was in 1812 and, finally, that this gradual decline in agricultural position is the natural and inevitable result of a law to which, as the offspring and embodiment of their crotchet of equality, the people cling with a fanatical attachment, the law of equal partition—a law which has already been carried out to such an extent, that out of an aggregate of 4,800,000 proprietors, 3,900,000, or four fifths, hold properties averaging only nine acres in extent; nay, so small are many of them, that one half the whole number are under forty shillings of yearly value. 3. Thirdly, and lastly, we have no hopes for France, on account of the deplorable material condition, and the still more deplorable material prospect, of her lower classes. This condition is bad enough now, it is steadily deteriorating, and the provisional government has taken every step in its power to make this deterioration more rapid, more certain, more difficult of arrest and cure. The most concise summary of facts will suffice to show what fearful elements of danger are in existence, and in active and multiplying operation. The commerce of France, always insignificant for so powerful and extensive an empire, is gradually decaying. The last report of the minister for that department shows a steady and regular diminution of their mercantile marine, which now can only muster one ship of 700 tons the ordinary size of English merchant vessels being 1,000 tons, and many of them 1,500 tons. The system of monopoly and protection so long perseveringly pursued, and still so dear to that uneconomic people- the perverse determination to force manufactures for which their country has no natural capabilities, at the expense of the export trade in those productions for which it is especially adapted- France, then, presents this alarming combinahave ended in placing not only the prosperity, tion of circumstances—an increasing populabut the very subsistence of the country in seri- tion, commerce languishing and contracting, agous jeopardy. Their wine trade the most nat-riculture decaying, and manufactures precarious | ural and profitable branch of commerce they and valetudinarian, because artificially bolstered possess has long been stagnant and languish-up; with all the causes which have led to these ing. Their silk trade to judge by the per- conditions still in active operation. But this is petual complaints of misery on the part of the not all. The new government is occupied with Lyonese workmen cannot be in a much more all its might, and with all its ingenuity, in exasperflourishing condition; their other manufactures ating all these fatal maladies. The revenue is are maintained by means of an artificial system collected with greater and greater difficulty every which must fall before the progress of economic year, from the increasing poverty of the people; science, and which may, any hour, be suddenly the debt is already immense; the public expenswept away; their woods, which should have diture far exceeds the income, and can scarcely been carefully husbanded for domestic use, have be diminished, for the present immense army of been wastefully consumed in iron furnaces, which officials cannot be disbanded till France shall produce iron at double the cost at which it have learned to change centralisation for mumight be furnished to them from England, till at nicipality. Yet the first acts of the provisional length the price of fuel has risen to a height government have tended enormously to add to which makes it almost inaccessible to the poor this expenditure, by taking, as it were, the whole man, for coal is scarcely to be found in France, unemployed population into its pay; by estaband cannot be purchased from England except lishing wages without labor, and national workby means of that export trade which is gradual- shops without even the aim or pretence of proly, and not slowly, drying up. ducing exchangeable commodities; enhancing the cost of production of exportable articles, by allowing the workmen to dictate terms and hours of work to their masters, and thus slaying manufactures and commerce by one treacherous blow; while at the same time they have dried up the most inexhaustible source of revenue by acting with a senseless tyranny, which has at once ruined the affluent, and prostrated financial and But the condition and prospects of agriculture, on which the vast majority of the population of France depends directly for subsistence, are still more calculated to excite alarm. It appears, from the authorities carefully collected by Mr. M'Culloch, in his recent "Treatise on Succession," that although two thirds of the population are there actually engaged in agricultural occu |