Real Source of Napoleon's Popularity.

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susceptibility to all those social influences which will make them reluctant and unsafe tools for resolute misgovernment.

Moreover, the moment the army perceives that Louis Napoleon's government depends on it alone, that moment it becomes supreme, exacting, jealous, and tyrannical. That moment also it becomes the arena of the most desperate personal intrigues. That moment gives to Louis Napoleon a score of formidable rivals. He is a civilian. He has won his spurs in no memorable battle; and it is only a military chief who can reign by the sword. If the army is to be the centre and instrument of power, there are many who have a better title than he has to seize it. If, therefore, he relies on the army alone, as an instrument of misgovernment, he is leaning on a spear which will break and pierce him.

Above all, Louis Napoleon must beware of so far mis-reading the history of the great man whose name he bears, as to look to war either for safety or for power. Let the nephew well understand and lay to heart the real foundations of the uncle's glories, -the true reason why the mere name is one of such magic,-the true reason why that name secured his own election, while yet an unknown or an ill-known man. It was not Napoleon's military, but his civil services that made him the idol of the nation from 1800 to 1804; it was a repetition, not of his military, but of his civil services, that, in 1848, France looked for from his nephew, when she chose him as her Chief at a moment when a similar confusion to that which Napoleon had closed seemed to call for a similar elucidation, and made the people turn with hope and affection to the mere echo of a great name. Napoleon's military career, magnificent and brilliant as it was, exhausted the nation, wearied the army, carried mourning and desolation into every family: Napoleon's military grandeur all passed away, and left France no wider, no greater, no richer than he found her. But his Code Civil has maintained its ground in every country where he planted it; his clear and simple coinage has been everywhere adopted and confirmed by the Sovereigns whom he had ejected, and who returned after his defeat; and his elaborate and scientific system of Centralized Administration has never once been shaken or meddled with by any of the Monarchs or Revolutions that have succeeded him. The trophies of war have all perished: the trophies of peace have all survived. The former made France miserable: the latter have made her a celebrity and an example. The former landed Napoleon in a miserable exile, and gave

"His name a doubt to all the winds of Heaven :"

the latter placed him high among the permanent benefactors of mankind.

To Louis Napoleon, situated as he is, a war would probably be about the most shallow and suicidal policy he could pursue. In the first place, till firmly and fairly established on his new throne, a foreign war would only let loose his domestic foes. No wise chief will march against an enemy, if he leaves half-subdued treason and angry discontent behind him in his own camp. In the second place, a war undertaken in these days must either be a war against despots with insurgents for allies; or a war against freedom with despots for allies. A war of the first kind would not only concentrate against the President all the continental powers, but would involve him in a net of incongruities and perplexities which would aggravate ten-fold the perplexities of his actual position. It could be successful only by the aid of those republican parties in Hungary, Italy, and Prussia, whose equivalents and analoga in France he had just repressed with such stern severity. He, the military usurper, the violent destroyer of a free Constitution, would have to hoist the banner of liberty, and march to the watchword of the people's war-cry. The hero of the coup d'état, the imprisoner of inviolable deputies, the gaoler of popular generals, would have to proclaim everywhere liberty to the captive, and the restoration of rights to the oppressed. If, on the other hand, he joined the European autocrats, and made war on liberty, and on England, Belgium, and Sardinia as its representatives, he would commit a still more fatal blunder. A war with England would be very popular, no doubt, with many Frenchmen, but it would be hateful to many more. It would be a proclamation of deliberate hostility against the cause of Constitutional rights and liberties all over the world. It would bring him, the Representative and Chief of a nation which still clings to the ideas of the first great revolution, into close alliance with the old wornout tyrannies of Europe, and degrade him into the ape and flunkey of the withered legitimacy of the world. It would bring the Republic of France, which swears by universal suffrage, into direct collision with every state in which any vestige of popular election yet survives. It would involve her in a crusade against the freedom for which she has fought so gallantly, and suffered and sacrificed so much. Such a war would be absolutely detestable to all the better spirits of the French nation—to the intelligent classes whom it is so important for Louis Napoleon to conciliate to his regime-to the moderate as well as the extreme-to all, except those who love plunder, and those who are thirsty for revenge. The Republicans of France sympathize deeply with the struggling patriots of every land. To them the expedition against Rome was the most hateful act of the Assembly. The Orleanists and Moderates feel that they must make common cause with the supporters of free Constitu

Effect of a War on Louis Napoleon's Position.

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tions and limited Monarchy throughout the globe. The nation as a whole feel that, if the great contest and victory of 1789 is to bear any fruit-if it is not to be regarded as a gigantic and insane blunder-if it was an emancipation to be gloried in, not a crime to be repented of--France must remain the ally and champion of national independence and popular rights, whereever they may be asserted. To espouse the cause of despotism, to attack the free states of Europe, would be to blaspheme the past, to deny her mission, to desecrate her flag. For France to league with the Russian autocrat, the Prussian perjurer, the Austrian tyrant against Constitutional England and Sardinia, and Republican America and Switzerland, would indeed be for "the dog to return to his vomit, and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire."

A war must either be successful or unsuccessful; in either event it would be fatal to Louis Napoleon's supremacy. If unsuccessful, the French would never forgive him for having provoked it. The army would desert him; the people would despise him; the gentry would hate him; the whole nation would cry out against him; every private interest and every patriotic passion would combine to assail him; and the very foundations of his power would crumble away like sand. If, on the other hand, the war were to be glorious and triumphant, it would insure his downfal as infallibly, though from another cause. Louis Napoleon is not a soldier. His army must be entrusted to the leadership of the ablest generals he can appoint. His victories must be won by others. He must select for the supreme command, not the men he can rely upon as devoted to himself, but the men whom the public voice or the desire of the troops shall proclaim to be most fitted for the post. The first brilliant exploit will give him a rival. The first glorious campaign will designate his dethroner and successor. He may give the signal for war; but others will reap its laurels, others will gather in its fruits, others will monopolize its glory. A war would at once place the very men whom he has just circumvented, insulted, and imprisoned, at the head of the army by means of which he has climbed to power. A war would at once place Cavaignac, Changarnier, Bedeau, and Lamoricière above him.

And if one of these should display any portion of that political and administrative genius, which the life of camps so often develops, and affords so many opportunities of manifesting; if he should be gifted with that terse and stirring eloquence which soldiers often possess; and if solid and practical capacity should give him over the reason of his countrymen, that ascendant which his victories have already given him over their imagina

tion, then, assuredly, Louis Napoleon would have found his master, and the Assembly its merciless avenger.

Secondly,-Louis Napoleon must especially guard himself against the very probable mistake of supposing, that because he has the support of the army and of the masses-of the numerical majority, and of the organized forces of the nation-he can afford to despise the hostility, or dispense with the allegiance of the middle and educated classes. He has already given some indications of his tendency to fall into this error. He is said to be contemplating the abolition of the vexatious and burdensome octroi, the imposition of an income-tax, and the promotion of extensive public works, with a view to satisfy the poorer classes. But measures of this sort will not suffice. The great body of the ignorant peasantry have indeed voted for him as representing in their minds the cause of order, and the brilliant recollections of the Consulate and the Empire. Large numbers of the working people in the towns have also voted for him under the impression that he will unite the two incompatibilities, of a large remission of taxation, and a vigorous increase of public expenditure. But these alone cannot maintain him. The town ranks of all sections are always unreasonable in their expectations from a new régime, and therefore certain to encounter disappointment, and to change their admiration into disgust. Moreover, in no country, least of all in France, can the contest ever be a hopeful one for despotism, when all the cultivation and intelligence of the nation is on one side, and only brute numbers on the other. In no strife in modern days, is the major vis ever on the side of the mere numerical majority. The skill, knowledge, discipline, mental influence, intellectual resources, and moral weight, of the middle and upper ranks, will always be an immense over-match for mere masses of ignorant, untrained and stupid prolétaires. Louis Napoleon, therefore, must govern so as to conciliate the adherence of the writers, the financiers, and the literary and political notabilities of Francethe natural leaders of her people, the representatives of her material interests and her moral power.

Now, to these classes, material interests are not the only ones, nor social comfort and physical wellbeing the sole necessaries of existence. Selfish and worldly as too many of them are, they cannot live by bread alone. They demand a scope for their activity, an arena for their talents. They will no longer be content with the old frivolities of the theatre and the salon. They have eaten of the tree of political knowledge; and, henceforth, the paradise of the senses and the fancy is disenchanted in their eyes. They have known the fascinations of political action, and will not again acquiesce in being utterly debarred from it. It

Danger of Suppressing a free Press.

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will be dangerous to attempt to re-convert them into cyphers, and impossible to confine their energies within the poor and narrow circle of social trifling which once sufficed. The President must reckon with this natural ambition, and this rational activity. His new Constitution must be such as to offer an adequate and worthy field for the power and aspirations of the practical intellect of France. His administration must provide places wherein the capacities of the restless and the ardent may find ample, safe, and serviceable development. He must prove to the rising and the experienced politicians of the country, that the new system offers great prizes for the ambitious, wide scope for the active, noble occupation for the high-minded. He must shew them that there are worthier and loftier vocations for the trained and ripened intellect than party squabbles, or parliamentary intrigues, in aiding the action of the State, and developing the resources of the country. His Cabinet must be a place where genuine ability of every kind may find an entrance. His Senate must be an assembly to which it will not be a degradation to belong. His House of Representatives must be a body entitled to speak freely and discuss without reticence and fear.

Further, Louis Napoleon must remember that the educated classes will not long endure to be debarred from the full privileges and enjoyments of their education. It is idle to imagine that men gifted with the wonderful power of precise and brilliant expression, which distinguishes the French, will not chafe and rebel if condemned to an enforced silence, or compelled to restrain their utterances within limits, or to direct them into channels which it may suit a despot to prescribe. Men conscious of capacity to think worthily and to write splendidly on the exciting questions of government and war, will not tamely permit themselves to be warned off their favourite and chosen fields, and relegated to the duller walks of science or fancy. Genius and talent, in every department of literature, like gunpowder, becomes dangerous by being compressed. They must be enlisted in the service of the Government, or they will be arrayed against it, and in the end will be too strong for it. A free press is even a better safety-valve than a free Constitution for the restless intellects and fiery tempers of the cultivated classes. In addition to this, we must bear in mind that the French are great readers. The circulation of the Parisian newspapers is far beyond that of the London journals. Books and pamphlets, too, sell there in numbers which appear to us nearly fabulous. The recent brochure of M. Garnier de Cassagnac is said to have sold 100,000 copies. To most Parisians of any education, and to many provincials, their daily paper, with its brilliant "leader" and its exciting feuilleton, is as necessary as