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Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 71, No. 436, February 1852

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2017
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O! how I haunted then; but of my child
No man had heard. Hopeless, and naked poor,
To war I rushed. This cot received me next;
And here, I trust, my mortal chapter ends.
But say, O say! how came you by this cross?"

The dying man upon his arm had risen,
Ere ceased the Soldier's tale: "She is thy child,
Take her," he said; "and may she be to thee,
As she to me has been, a daughter true,
A child of good, a blessing from on high!"
So saying, back he fell. Around his neck
Her arms of love the sobbing damsel threw,
And kissed him many a time. And then she rose,
And flung herself upon the Soldier's breast —
For he's her father too. And many tears,
Silent, the old man rained upon her neck.

"O wondrous night!" the dying tar went on,
"Who could have thought of this! I am content.
The Lord be praised that she has found a friend,
Since I must go from her! That night of fire,
Our brig of war bore down upon your ship,
And sent her boats to save you from the flame.
Near you we could not come; so forth I swam,
And to your crowded stern I fixed a rope,
To take the people off. Back as I slid
Along the line, to show them how to come,
A child, upheaved upon the billow top,
Was borne against my breast; I snatched her up;
Fast to my neck she clung; none could I find
To claim and take her: she was thus mine own.
That night she wore the cross which now she wears.
Why need I tell the changes of my life?
In war I lost an arm, and then an eye;
My other eye went out from sympathy,
And home I came a blind and helpless man.
But I had still one comforter, my child —
My young breadwinner, too! From wake to wake
She led me on, playing her mandolin,
Which I had brought her from the south of Spain.
She'll tell you all the rest when I am gone.
Bury me now in your own burial-place,
That still our daughter may be near my dust.
And Jesus keep you both!" he said, and died.

They buried him in their own burial-place.
And many a flower, heart-planted by that maid
And good Old Soldier, bloomed upon his grave.
And many a requiem, when the gloaming came,
The damsel played above his honoured dust.
Not less, but all the more, her heart was knit
Unto her own true father. He, the while,
How proud was he to give her up his keys,
Mistress installed of all his little stores;
And introduce her to his flowers, and bees,
Making the sea-green honey – all for her;
And sit beside her underneath the oak,
Listening the story of her bygone life.
In turn she made him of her mother tell,
And aye a tear dropped on her needlework;
And all his wars the old campaigner told.
And God was with them, and in peace and love
They dwelt together in their happy home.

RESULTS OF REVOLUTION IN EUROPE

The fall of Napoleon completed the first drama of the historical series arising out of the French Revolution. Democratic ambition had found its natural and inevitable issue in warlike achievement; the passions of the camp had succeeded those of the forum, and the conquest of all the Continental monarchies had, for a time, apparently satiated the desires of an insatiable people. But the reaction was as violent as the action. In every warlike operation two parties are to be considered – the conquerors and the conquered. The rapacity, the insolence, the organised exactions of the French proved grievous in the extreme, and the hardship was felt as the more insupportable when the administrative powers of Napoleon gave to them the form of a regular tribute, and conducted the riches of conquered Europe, in a perennial stream, to the imperial treasury. A unanimous cry of indignation arose from every part of the Continent; a crusade commenced, in all quarters, from the experienced suffering of mankind; from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south, the liberating warriors came forth, and the strength of an injured world collected by a convulsive effort at the heart, to throw off the load which had oppressed it. Securely cradled amidst the waves, England, like her immortal chief at Waterloo, had calmly awaited the hour when she might be called on to take the lead in the terrible strife. Her energy, when it arrived, rivalled her former patience in privation, her fortitude in suffering; and the one only, nation which, throughout the struggle, had been unconquered, at length stood foremost in the fight, and struck the final and decisive blow for the deliverance of the world.

But the victory of nations did not terminate the war of opinion; the triumph of armies did not end the collision of thought. France was conquered, but the principles of her Revolution were not extirpated; they had covered her own soil with mourning, but they were too flattering to the pride of the human heart to be subdued but by many ages of suffering. The lesson taught by the subjugation of her power, the double capture of her capital, was too serious to be soon forgotten by her rulers; but the agony which had been previously felt by the people, had ended with a generation which was now mouldering in its grave. It is by, the last impressions that the durable opinions of mankind are formed; and effects had here succeeded each other so rapidly, that the earlier ones were in a great measure forgotten. The conscription had caused the guillotine to be forgotten; grief for the loss of the frontier of the Rhine had obliterated that of the dissolution of the National Assembly. Men did not know that the first was the natural result of the last. There was little danger of France soon crossing the Rhine, but much of her reviving the opinions of Mirabeau and Siéyès. The first drama, where the military bore the prominent part, was ended; but the second, in which civil patriots were to be the leading characters, and vehement political passions excited, was still to commence; the Lager had terminated, but the Piccolomini was only beginning, and Wallenstein's Death had not yet commenced.

Everything conspired to render the era subsequent to the fall of Napoleon as memorable for civil changes as that era itself had been for military triumphs. Catherine of Russia had said at the commencement of the Revolution, that the only way to prevent its principles spreading, and save Europe from civil convulsion, was to engage in war, and cause the national to supersede the social passions. The experiment, after a fearful struggle, succeeded; but it succeeded only for a time. War wore itself out; a contest of twenty years' duration at once drained away the blood and exhausted the treasures of Europe. The excitement, the animation, the mingled horrors and glories of military strife, were followed by a long period of repose, during which the social passions were daily gaining strength from the very magnitude of the contest which had preceded it. The desire for excitement continued, and the means of gratifying it had ceased: the cannon of Leipsic and Waterloo still resounded through the world, but no new combats furnished daily materials for anxiety, terror, or exultation. The nations were chained to peace by the immensity of the sacrifices made in the preceding war: all governments had suffered so much during its continuance, that, like wounded veterans, they dreaded a renewal of the fight. During the many years of constrained repose which succeeded the battle of Waterloo, the vehement excitement occasioned by the Revolutionary wars continued; but, from default of external, it turned to internal objects. Democratic came instead of military ambition; the social succeeded the national passions; the spirit was the same, but its field was changed. Meanwhile the blessed effect of long continued peace, by allowing industry in every quarter to reap its fruits in quiet, was daily adding to the strength and energy, because augmenting the resources, of the middle class, in whom these feelings are ever the strongest, because they are the first to be promoted by a change; while, in a similar proportion, the power of government was daily declining, from the necessity of providing for the interest of the debts contracted during the preceding strife, and reducing the military forces which had so long averted its dangers or achieved its triumphs.

The change in the ruling passions of mankind has clearly appeared in the annals of nations, in the thirty years which followed the fall of Napoleon. Governments have often great difficulties to contend with, but it has been not with each other, but with their subjects; many of them have been overturned, not by foreign armies, but by their own. Europe has been often on the verge of a general war, but the danger of it arose not, as in former days, from the throne, but the cottage; the persons who urged it on were not kings or their ministers, but the tribunes of the people. The chief efforts of governments in every country have been directed to the preservation of that peace which the collisions of so many interests, and the vehemence of such passions, endangered: war was repeatedly threatened, but it was so, not by sovereigns, but by the people. The sovereigns were successful; but their being so only augmented the dangers of their position, and increased the peril arising from the ardour of the social passions with which they had to contend; for every year of peace added to the strength of their opponents as much as it diminished their own.

The preservation of peace, unbroken from 1815 to 1830, was fraught with immense blessings to Europe; and, had it been properly improved, might have been so to the cause of freedom throughout the world; but it proved fatal to the dynasty of the Restoration. From necessity, as well as inclination, from the recollection of the double capture of Paris, as well as conscious inability to conduct warlike operations, Louis XVIII. remained at peace; and no monarch who does so seems likely to remain long on the French throne. Death, and extreme prudence of conduct, alone saved him from dethronement. The whole history of the Restoration, from 1815 to 1830, was that of one vast and ceaseless conspiracy against the Bourbons, existing rather in the hearts and minds than the measures and designs of men. No concessions to freedom, no moderation of government, no diminution of public burdens, could reconcile the people to a dynasty imposed on them by the stranger. One part of the people were dreaming of the past, another speculating on the future; all were dissatisfied with the present. The wars, the glories of the Empire, rose up in painful contrast to the peace and monotony of the present. Successive contractions of the elective constituency, and restrictions on the press, had no effect in diminishing the danger it excited in the minds of men, and only became, like all other concealed passions, more powerful from the difficulty of giving it expression. France was daily increasing in wealth, freedom, and material well-being, but it was as steadily declining in contentment, loyalty, and happiness – a strange combination, but such as is by no means unknown in private life, when all external appliances are favourable, but the heart is gnawed by a secret and ungratified passion. At length the general discontent rose to such a pitch that it became impossible to carry on the government; a coup d'état was attempted, to restore some degree of efficiency to the executive, but it was attempted by the "feeble arms of confessors and kings;" the army wavered in its duty; the Orleans family took advantage of the tumult, and the dynasty of the elder branch of the Bourbons was overthrown.

That so great an event as the overthrow of a dynasty by a sudden urban insurrection, should have produced a great impression all over the world, was to have been expected; but it could hardly have been anticipated it would have been attended by the effects with which it actually was in Great Britain. But many causes had conspired at that period to prepare the public mind in England for changes; and, what is very remarkable, these causes had arisen mainly from the magnitude of the successes with which the war had been attended. The capital which had been realised during the war had been so great, the influence of the moneyed interest had become so powerful, that the legislature became affected by their desires. The Monetary Bill of 1819, before many years had elapsed, had added 50 per cent to the value of money, and the weight of debts and taxes, and taken as much from the remuneration of industry. Hence a total change in the feelings, influences, and political relations of society. The territorial aristocracy was weakened as much as the commercial was aggrandised; small landed proprietors were everywhere ruined from the fall of prices; the magnates stood forth in increased lustre from the enhanced value of their revenues. Industry was querulous from long-continued suffering; wealth, ambitious from sudden exaltation. Political power was coveted by one class, from the excess of their riches; by another, from the depth of their misery. The emancipation of the Roman Catholics severed the last bond, that of a common religion, which had hitherto held together the different classes, and imprinted on the minds of a large and sincere class a thirst for vengeance, which overwhelmed every consideration of reason. The result of these concurring causes was that the institutions of England were essentially altered by the earthquake of 1830, and a new class elevated to supreme power by means, bloodless indeed, but scarcely less violent than the revolution which had overturned Charles X.

The revolution of 1830 elevated the middle class to the direction of affairs in France, and the Reform Bill vested the same class in effect with supreme power in the British empire. Vast effects followed this all-important change in both countries. For the first time in the history of mankind the experiment was made of vesting the electoral franchise, not in a varied and limited class, as in Old England, or in the whole citizens, as in revolutionary France or America, but in persons possessed only of a certain money qualification. The franchise was not materially changed in France, but the general arming of the National Guard, and the revolutionary origin of the new government, effectually secured attention to the wishes of the burgher aristocracy; in England they were at once vested with the command of the state, for the House of Commons was returned by a million of electors, who voted for 658 members, of whom two-thirds were the representatives of boroughs, and two-thirds of their constituents shopkeepers, or persons whom they influenced. Thence consequences of incalculable importance in both countries, and effects which have left indelible traces in the future history of mankind.

The first effect of this identity of feeling and interest, in the class thus for the first time intrusted with the practical direction of affairs in both countries, was a close political alliance between their governments, and an entire change in the Foreign policy of Great Britain. To the vehement hostility and ceaseless rivalry of four centuries succeeded an alliance sincere and cordial at the time; though, like other intimacies founded on identity of passion, not of interest, it might be doubted whether it would survive the emotions which gave it birth. In the mean time, however, the effects of this alliance were novel, and in the highest degree important. When the lords of the earth and the sea united, no power in Europe ventured to confront them; the peace of Europe was preserved by their union. The Czar in full march towards Paris was arrested on the Vistula; he found ample employment for his arms in resisting the efforts of the Poles to restore their much-loved nationality. Austria and Prussia were too much occupied with the surveillance of the discontented in their own dominions to think of renewing the crusade of 1813; nor did they venture to do so when the forces of England were united to those of France. The consequence was that the march of revolution was unresisted in Western Europe, and an entire change effected in the institutions and dynasties on the throne in its principal continental states. The Orleans family continued firmly, and to all appearance permanently, seated on the throne of France; Belgium was revolutionised, torn from the monarchy of the Netherlands, and the Cobourg family seated on its throne: the monarchies of Spain and Portugal were overturned, and a revolutionary dynasty of queens placed on the thrones of these countries, in direct violation of the Treaty of Utrecht; while in the east of Europe the last remnants of Polish nationality were extinguished on the banks of the Vistula. Durable interests were overlooked, ancient alliances broken, long-established rivalries forgotten in the fleeting passions of the moment. Confederacies the most opposite to the lasting policy of the very nations who contracted them, were not only formed, but acted upon. Europe beheld with astonishment the arms of Prussia united with those of Russia to destroy the barrier of the Continent against the Muscovite power on the Sarmatian plains; the Leopards of England joined to the tricolor standard to wrest Antwerp from Holland, and secure the throne of the Netherlands to a son-in-law of France; and the scarlet uniforms blended with the ensigns of revolution to beat down the liberties of the Basque provinces, and prepare the heiress of Spain for the arms of a son of France, on the very theatre of Wellington's triumphs.

Novel and extraordinary as were these results of the revolution of 1830 upon the political relations of Europe, its effects upon the colonial empire of England, and, through it, upon the future destinies of the human species, were still greater and more important. To the end of the world, the consequences of the change in the policy of England will be felt in every quarter of the globe. Its first effect was to bring about the emancipation of the negroes in the West Indies. Eight hundred thousand slaves in the British colonies in that quarter of the globe received the perilous gift of unconditional freedom. For the first time in the history of mankind the experiment was made of extending the institutions of Japhet to the sons of Ham. As a natural result of so vast and sudden a change, and of the conferring of the institutions of the Anglo-Saxons upon unlettered savages, the proprietors of those noble colonies were ruined, their affections alienated, and the authority of the mother country preserved only by the terror of arms. Canada shared in the moral earthquake which shook the globe, and that noble offshoot of the empire was only preserved to Great Britain by the courage of its soldiers and the loyalty of its English and Highland citizens. Australia rapidly advanced in wealth, industry, and population during these eventful years. Every commercial crisis which paralysed industry, every social struggle which excited hope, every successful innovation which diminished security, added to the stream of hardy and enterprising emigrants who crowded to its shores; New Zealand was added to the already colossal empire of England in Oceania; and it is apparent that the foundations have been laid in a fifth hemisphere of another nation, destined to rival, perhaps eclipse, Europe itself in the career of human improvement. For the first time in the history of mankind the course of advancement ceased to be from East to West; but it was not destined to be arrested by the Rocky Mountains; the mighty day of four thousand years was drawing to its close; but before its light was extinguished in the West, civilisation had returned to the land of its birth; and ere its orb had set in the waves of the Pacific, the sun of knowledge was illuminating the isles of the Eastern Sea.

Great and important as have been these results of the social convulsions of France and England in the first instance, they sink into insignificance compared to those which have followed the change in the commercial policy and increased stringency of the monetary laws of Great Britain. The effect of these all-important measures, from which so much was expected, and so little, save suffering, has been received, has been to augment to an extraordinary and unparalleled degree the outward tendency of the British people. The agricultural population, especially in Ireland, has been violently torn up from the land of its birth by woeful suffering; a famine of the thirteenth appeared amidst the population of the nineteenth century; and to this terrible but transient source of suffering has been superadded the lasting discouragement arising from the virtual closing of the market of England to Irish produce, by the inundations of grain from foreign states. Since the barriers raised by human regulations have been thrown down, the eternal laws of nature have appeared in full operation; the old and rich state can always undersell the young and poor one in manufactures, and is always under-sold by it in agricultural produce. The fate of old Rome apparently is reserved for Great Britain; the harvests of Poland, the Ukraine, and America, prostrate agriculture in the British Isles as effectually as those of Sicily, Libya, and Egypt did the old Patrimony of the Legions; and after the lapse of eighteen hundred years the same effects appear. The great cities flourish, but the country decays; the exportation of human beings and the importation of human food keep up a gainful traffic in the seaport towns; but it is every day more and more gliding into the hands of the foreigner; and while exports and imports are constantly increasing, the mainstay of national strength, the cultivation of the soil, is rapidly declining. The effects upon the strength, resources, and population of the empire, and the growth of its colonial possessions, have been equally important. Europe, before the middle of the century, beholds with astonishment Great Britain, which, at the end of the war, had been self-supporting, importing ten millions of quarters of grain, being a full fifth of the national subsistence, and a constant stream of three hundred thousand emigrants annually leaving its shores. Its inhabitants, which for four centuries had been constantly increasing, have declined a million in the last five years in the two islands, and two millions in Ireland, taken separately; but the foundations of a vast empire have been laid in the Transatlantic and Australian wilds; and the annual addition of three hundred thousand souls to the European population of the New World by immigration alone, has come almost to double the already marvellous rapidity of American increase.

While this vast transference of the Anglo-Saxon and Celtic population to the embryo states of America and Australia has been going forward, the United States of America are rapidly increasing in numbers and extent of territory. The usual and fearful ambition of republican states has appeared there in more than its usual proportions. During the ten years from 1840 to 1850, the inhabitants of the United States have increased six millions: they have grown from eighteen to twenty-four millions. But the increase of its territory has been still more extraordinary: it has been extended, during the same period, from somewhat above two millions, to three million three hundred thousand square miles. A territory nine times the size of Old France has been added to the devouring Republic in ten years. The conquests of Rome in ancient, of the English in India in modern times, afford no parallel instance of rapid and unbroken increase. Everything indicates that a vast migration of the human species is going forward, and the family of Japhet in the course of being transferred from its native to its destined seats. To this prodigious movement it is hard to say whether the disappointed energies of democratic vigour in Europe, or the insatiable spirit of republican ambition in America, has most contributed; for the first overcame all the attachments of home, and all the endearments of kindred in a large – and that the most energetic – portion of the people in the old world; while the latter has prepared for their reception ample seats – in which a kindred tongue and institutions prevail – in the new.

While this vast and unexampled exodus of the Anglo-Saxon race, across a wider ocean than the Red Sea, and to a greater promised land than that of Canaan, has been going forward, a corresponding, and in some respects still more marvellous, increase of the Sclavonic race in the Muscovite dominions has taken place. The immense dominions and formidable power of the Czar, which had received so vast an addition from the successful termination of the contest with Napoleon, were scarcely less increased by the events of the long peace which followed. The inhuman cruelty with which the Turks prosecuted the war with the Greeks, awakened all the sympathies of the Christian world; governments were impelled by their subjects into a crusade against the Crescent; and the battle of Navarino, which, for the first time in history, beheld the flags of England, France, and Russia side by side, at once ruined the Ottoman navy, and reft the most important provinces of Greece from Turkey. The inconceivable infatuation of the Turks, and their characteristic ignorance of the strength of the enemy whom they provoked, impelled them soon after into a war with Russia; and then the immeasurable superiority which the Cross had now acquired over the Crescent at once appeared. Varna, the scene of the bloody defeat of the French chivalry by the Janizaries of Bajazet, yielded to the scientific approaches of the Russians; the barrier, hitherto insurmountable, of the Balkan, was passed by Diebitch; Adrianople fell; and the anxious intervention of the other European powers alone prevented the entire subjugation of Turkey, and the entry of the Muscovite battalions through the breach made by the cannon of Mahomet in the walls of Constantinople.

Great as were these results to the growth of Russia, of the forced and long-continued pacification of Western Europe, still more important were those which followed its intestine convulsions. Every throe of the revolutionary earthquake in France has tended to its ultimate advantage, and been attended by a great accession of territory or augmentation of influence. The Revolution of 1789 in its ultimate effects brought the Cossacks to Paris; that of 1830 extinguished the last remains of Polish nationality, and established the Muscovites in a lasting sway on the banks of the Vistula. The revolt of Ibrahim Pacha, and the victory of Koniah, which reduced the Ottoman empire to the verge of destruction, brought the Russian battalions to Scutari, and averted subjugation from a rebellious vassal, only by surrendering the keys of the Dardanelles to the Czar, and converting the Black Sea into a Russian lake. Greater still have been the results of the French Revolution of 1848 to the moral influence, and through it the real power, of Russia. Germany, torn by revolutionary passions, was soon brought into the most deplorable state of anarchy; Austria, distracted at once by a Bohemian, Italian, and Hungarian revolt, was within a hair-breadth of destruction; and the presence of 150,000 Russians on the Hungarian plains alone determined the Magyar contest in favour of Austria. Immense is the addition which this decisive move has made to the influence of Russia; no charge of the Old Guard of Napoleon at the close of the day was ever more triumphant. Russia now boasts of 66,000,000 of men within her dominions; her territories embrace a seventh of the habitable globe; and her influence is paramount from the wall of China to the banks of the Rhine.

Great as the acquisitions of the Muscovite power have been during the last thirty years, they have almost been rivalled by those of the British in India. They have fairly outstripped everything in this age of wonders; a parallel will in vain be sought for them in the whole annals of the world. They do not resemble the conquests of the Romans in ancient, or of the Russians in modern times; they have not been the result of the lust of conquest, steadily and perseveringly applied to general subjugation, or the passions of democracy finding their natural vent in foreign conquest. As little were they the offspring of a vehement and turbulent spirit, similar to that which carried the French eagles to Vienna and the Kremlin. The disposition of the Anglo-Saxons, practically gain-seeking, and shunning wars as an interruption of their profits, has been a perpetual check to any such disposition – their immense distance from the scene of action on the plains of Hindostan, an effectual bar to its indulgence. India has not been governed by a race of warlike sovereigns, eager for conquest, covetous of glory; but by a company of pacific merchants, intent only on the augmentation of their profits and the diminution of their expenses. Their great cause of complaint against the Governors-General to whom have been successively intrusted the government of their vast dominions, was, that they were too prone to defensive preparations; that they did not sufficiently study the increase of these profits or the saving of these expenses. War was constantly forced upon them as a measure of necessity; repeated coalitions of the native sovereigns compelled them to draw the sword to prevent their expulsion from the peninsula. Conquest has been the condition of existence.

Yet such is the vigour of the Anglo-Saxon race, and the energy with which the successive contests were maintained by the diminutive force at the disposal of the company, that marvellous beyond all example have been the victories which they gained and the conquests which they achieved. The long period of European peace which followed the battle of Waterloo, was anything but one of repose in India. It beheld successively the final war with, and subjugation of, the Mahrattas by the genius of Lord Hastings, the overthrow of the Pindaree horsemen, the difficult subjugation of the Goorkha mountaineers; the storming of Bhurtpore, the taming of "the giant strength of Ava;" the conquest of Cabul, and fearful horrors of the Coord Cabul retreat; the subsequent gallant recovery of its capital; the conquest of Scinde, and reduction of Gwalior; the wars with the Sikhs, the desperate passages of arms at Ferozeshah and Chilianwalah, and the final triumphs of Sobraon and Goojerat. Nor was it in the peninsula of Hindostan alone that the strength of the British, when at length fairly aroused, was exerted; the vast empire of China was wrestled with at the very moment when their strength in the East was engaged in the Affghanistan expedition; and the world, which was anxiously expecting the fall of the much-envied British empire in India, beheld with astonishment, in the same Delhi Gazette, the announcement of the second capture of Cabul in the heart of Asia, and the dictating of a glorious peace to the Chinese under the walls of Nankin.

While successes so great and bewildering were attending the arms of civilisation on the remote parts of the earth, a great and most disastrous convulsion was preparing in its heart. Paris, as in every age, was the centre of impulsion to the whole civilised world. Louis Philippe had a very difficult game to play, and he long played it with success; but no human ability could, with the disposition of the people, permanently maintain the government of the country. He aimed at being the Napoleon of Peace; and his great predecessor knew better than any one, and has said oftener, that he himself would have failed in the attempt. Louis Philippe owed his elevation to revolution; and he had the difficult, if not impossible, task to perform, without foreign war, of coercing its passions. Hardly was he seated on the throne, when he felt the necessity in deeds, if not in words, of disclaiming his origin. His whole reign was a continued painful and perilous conflict with the power which had created him, and at length he sank in this struggle. He had not the means of maintaining the conflict. A successful usurper, he could not appeal to traditionary influences; a revolutionary monarch, he was compelled to coerce the passions of revolution; a military chief, he was obliged to restrain the passions of the soldiers. They demanded war, and he was constrained to keep them at peace; they sighed for plunder, and he could only meet them with economy; they panted for glory, and his policy retained them in obscurity.

Political influence – in other words, corruption – was the only means left of carrying on the government, and that state engine was worked with great industry, and for a time with great success. But although gratification to the selfish passions must always, in the long run, be the main foundation of government, men are not entirely and for ever governed by their influence. "C'est l'imagination," said Napoleon, "qui domine le monde." All nations, and most of all the French, occasionally require aliment to the passions; and no dynasty will long maintain its sway over them which does not frequently gratify their ruling dispositions. Napoleon was so popular because he at once consulted their interests and gratified their passions; Louis Philippe the reverse, because he attended only to their interests. Great as was his influence, unbounded his patronage, immense his revenue, it yet fell short of the wants of his needy supporters: he experienced erelong the truth of the well-known saying, that every office given away made one ungrateful and three discontented. The immediate cause of his fall in February 1848 was the pusillanimity of his family, who declined to head his troops, and the weakness of his counsellors, who urged submission in presence of danger; but its remote causes were of much older date and wider extent. Government, to be lasting, must be founded either on traditionary influence, the gratification of new interests and passions, or the force of arms; and that one which has not the first will do well to rest as soon as possible on the two last.
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