soldiers are uselessly massacred, if, through can delegate to those whom he may think the folly or the timidity of another, they deserving of it the absolute power of choice are kept disgracefully in reserve, if men and rejection which he enjoys himself. are ordered to form square when they ought When Martin Pret was asked to take the to charge, or to retreat when there is no sal- command of the staff of the army of the vation for them but in advancing, if they East, he asked, who was to be under him? are left without orders, because the officer The Minister of War desired him to make who ought to give them has lost his presence out his own list. It was adopted without of mind and self-command, those who ap- addition or omission. Canrobert has the pointed these incompetent functionaries do same freedom of action as his master. He not see the result of their appointments, do is not expected to distribute his doses of not hear of them for weeks, frequently do praise among his officers according to their not hear of them at all. If they do hear of rank. He can mention in his despatches, them, they may suffer remorse, but they escape without apology, captains, and subalterns, and punishment, often, indeed, blame. On whom even privates. There is something grand, has the ignominy of the appointment which something magnanimous, in the unnoticed, produced the calamities of Cabul fallen? unrewarded heroism of the English soldier; On no one. Who is responsible for retain- but France does not think it wise or magnanimous to let the heroism of her humbler sons remain unnoticed and unrewarded.

Some years ago, during one of the quarrels which Louis Philippe's chamber was always picking with England, we discussed with a French general the possibility of our being surprised by an unexpected invasion from France.

ing in high commands men, who, be it their fault, or be it their misfortune, escape from services of danger because they have lost the confidence of their superiors and of their subordinates, and are not employed by the one because they might not be obeyed by the others? Who is responsible for the appointments which have endangered our army in the Crimea, and which in contingencies "Those who think,' said our military from which Heaven protect us, may ruin it? friend, such a surprise possible, never preWho is ultimately responsible for the inac- pared an army for a campaign. It is true. tion of our fleet, during the battle of the that a warlike nation can, without many Alma, when the port of Sebastopol was still previous arrangements, make an inroad on open, and those who ought to have manned an unarmed neighbour. It would not take its ships and its batteries were miles away, us long to make a rush on Brussels. But if swelling Menschikoff's forces? Who placed a serious invasion is to be attempted, if good it in hands that had not enterprise enough troops are to be encountered, if an army is at least to steam towards the mouth of the to be got ready to which the honour of the harbour, to feel their way, and, if it was country can be entrusted, six months is the found, as it probably would have been found, least period of preparation. insufficiently defended, to enter? Who is ultimately responsible for keeping our army, for two days after the battle, employed in burying the dead, and attending to the wounded, instead of landing seamen and marines for a service, important, indeed necessary, but not such as a victorious army, with the prize of the campaign within its reach, ought, when the thing might have been as well done by others, to have been detained to perform?

First, the different regiments that are disposable must be sifted, in order to get from each of them two battalions d'élite for foreign service. These battalions must be united in brigades, and the capacity of the regimental officers tested by the chef de brigade, in the same way as that in which those officers tested that of their own privates and sous-officiers. All who cannot stand this test are sent back to the battalions kept at home. The brigades, again, must be united in a We predict that no individual will be held division. They must be accustomed to act responsible. The blame will be thrown on together: to know how far one regiment the claims of high birth, on the claims of and one brigade can rely on another. The seniority, on the routine of office, on profes- general of division has to do only with the sional etiquette, in short, on the hateful colonels. He sends back, without ceremony, abuses and childish pretexts which make the without excuse, all whom he finds too old, military professions the only ones in Eng- or too negligent, or too ignorant, or too dull, land in which merit is unproductive of ad- for real fighting. The comparatively humvancement, or demerit of dismissal. ble social position of our regimental officers, more than two-thirds of whom have risen from the ranks, enables him to do so without mercy. It is thus by a long obstinate process of selecting, and training, and changing,

From all these chains, which bind the English giant, Louis Napoleon is free. IIe can choose the best man, he can put him in the situation for which he is most fit, and he

and promoting, and discharging, that a divi- France is now bent is little felt in the capital. sion is moulded into one mass of homogene- It shows itself principally in the subdued tone ous materials, the efficiency of which can be relied on, as we rely on that of a well-constructed machine. If any one step in the process be omitted, or even hurried over, the machine becomes imperfect, and, if it be opposed to one that has been properly prepared, it breaks in the general's hands. But this takes time. I said six months, but that is too little. The army that gained Austerlitz had been subjected to this training for two years.'

'But the army,' we answered, of the Hundred Days, the army which gained the great battle of Ligny, was raised by Napoleon in six weeks.'

'Yes,' said the general; but you must recollect what were his materials. More than 180,000 veterans, who, though young, had passed years under fire, whom, in his presumption, he had scattered over all Europe, from Dantzig to Alexandria, were restored to France, by the peace. He had only to stamp, and the legions sprung up. And, after all, what was the result? This hastily collected army was broken, was scattered, was actually dissolved, as no French army ever was before, in a single battle. Would the army of Austerlitz have thus fallen to pieces? I will not say that that army would have gained Waterloo; though, if it had been ready, as it would have been, to attack at eight in the morning, instead of at eleven, the chances would have been in its favour: but it would not have been ignominiously beaten. It might have failed: but it would not have been destroyed.'

of the debates, if debates they can be called, of the Corps Législatif, and in the inanity of the newspapers. Conversation is as free in Paris as it was under the Republic. Public opinion would not support the Government in an attempt to silence the salons of Paris. But Paris possesses a public opinion, because it possesses one or two thousand highly educated men whose great amusement, we might say whose great business, is to converse, to criticise the acts of their rulers, and to pronounce decisions which float from circle to circle, till they reach the workshop, and even the barrack. In the provinces there are no such centres of intelligence and discussion, and, therefore on political subjects, there is no public opinion. The consequence is, that the action of the Government is there really despotic; and it employs its irresistible power in tearing from the departmental and communal authorities all the local franchises and local self-government which they had extorted from the central power in a struggle of forty years.

Centralization, though it is generally disclaimed by every party that is in opposition, is so powerful an instrument that every Monarchical Government which has ruled France, since 1789, has maintained, and even tried to extend it.

The Restoration, and the Government of July 1830, were as absolute centralizers as Napoleon himself. The local power which Louis Philippe was forced to surrender he made over to the narrow Pays légal, the privileged ten pounders, who were then attemptWould it be possible thus to melt and re- ing to govern France. The Republic gave melt, and hammer, and twist, and grind, and the election of the Conseils Généraux to the polish, to the highest perfection of efficiency, people, and thus dethroned the notaries who the army of an aristocracy? Could military governed those assemblies when they reprepeers, or members of the House of Commons, sented only the Bourgeoisie. The Republic or friends of peers, or of members, or of edi- made the Maires elective; the Republic tors, in short, could any persons capable of placed education in the hands of the local appealing, directly or indirectly, to the pub-authorities. Under its influence the Comlic, be thus treated? Can an incompetent munes, the Cantons, and the Departments general or colonel be sent home at the risk were becoming real administrative bodies. of a debate? Louis Napoleon can appoint, They are now mere geographical divisions. promote, dismiss, and degrade; he can look The Prefect appoints the Maires; the Preonly to the interests of the campaign; and despise those of the individual; because, in France, there is no Public, and no appeal. France purchases, at an enormous price, an enormous military advantage.

fect appoints in every canton a Commissaire de Police, seldom a respectable man, as the office is not honourable; the Gardes Champêtres, who are the local police, are put under his control; the Recteur, who was a sort of local Minister of Education in every deWe have confined to Paris our description partment, is suppressed; his powers are of French political feeling, because, although transferred to the Prefect; the Prefect apwe have recently visited the provinces of points, promotes, and dismisses all the mas France, we have found in them no expres-ters of the écoles primaires. The Prefect can destroy the prosperity of every Commune The uncontrolled power under which that displeases him. He can displace its

sion of it.

'April 2.

functionaries, close its schools, obstruct its allowed us to extract some of the conversapublic works, and withhold the money which tions which contain matters of present the Government habitually gives in aid of interest. local improvements. He can convert it, in- The two which follow relate to Germany; deed, into a mere unorganized aggregation a country which we believe destined to be in of individuals, by dismissing every Commu- a very few years the scene of important nal functionary, and placing its concerns in events for good or for evil-probably for the hands of his own nominees. There are both. The first interlocutor, F., is a Prussian. many hundreds of Communes that have been thus treated, and whose masters now are uneducated peasants. The Prefect can dissolve 'F. called on me, he is passing through the Counseil Général of his department, and Paris on his road from Stuttgart to resume although he cannot actually name their suc- his post in Berlin. " "Nothing," he said, "can cessors, he does so virtually. No candidate be more dangerous than the feeling among for an elective office can succeed unless he is many of the smaller states of Germany. supported by the Government. The courts You are there never out of the preof law, criminal and civil, are the tools of the sence of an absolute sovereign, who knows executive. The Government appoints the everybody and everything, meddles with judges, the Prefect provides the jury, and la everybody and every thing, and allows no Haute Police acts without either. All power freedom of action or of speech. What makes of combination, even of mutual communica- this despotism more odious is, that it is motion, except from mouth to mouth, is gone. dern, and that it is an usurpation. Before The newspapers are suppressed or intimi- the French Revolution, all these states had dated, the printers are the slaves of the Pre constitutions, old and antiquated, but with fect, as they lose their privilege if they considerable protective force. And since offend; in every country town conversation that revolution others have been substituted is watched and reported; every individual for them, which, if they were observed, would stands defenceless and insulated, in the give freedom. But the example of Hesse face of this unscrupulous executive, with its has shown that the most constitutional opthousands of armed hands, and its thou- position to the most profligate minister, and sands of prying eyes. The only opposition the most oppressive ruler, will be put down that is ventured, is the abstaining from by foreign intervention. The crimes comvoting. Whatever be the office, and what-mitted by Austria, and tolerated by Prusever be the man, the candidate of the Prefect sia in Hesse, will never be forgotten. The comes in; but if he is a man who would have been unanimously rejected in a state of freedom, the bolder electors show their indignation by their absence.

least revolutionary spark will set on fire Baden and Wirtemburg, and Bavaria and the Hesses. Prussia and Austria can stand the storm better. Prussia, because she has In such a state of society the traveller can gradually acquired a constitution which gives learn little. Even those who rule it, are lit-some liberty and more hope. Austria, betle acquainted with the feelings of their subjects. The vast democratic sea on which the Empire floats is influenced by currents, and agitated by ground swells which the Government discovers only by their effects. It knows nothing of the passions which influ- Court. He belongs to a Hungarian family, ence these great apparently slumbering which has always sided with Austria. My masses. Indeed, it takes care, by stifling real income,' he said to me, 'is now my their expression, to prevent their being miserable salary. The Austrian Govern

known.

cause her existing system of government is essentially revolutionary. The wildest Socialist could not treat with more contempt the rights of property. I met at Baden last autumn a friend who fills an office about the

ment has suppressed the robot, or personal service due to me from my tenants, it has The second work of which the title is pre- given to those tenants, as their own, half of fixed to this article, contains notes made by the land which they held under me, and it an English traveller in the spring of 1854. proposes to give me in exchange for it an inThough the scene is laid in Paris, no French demnity, payable partly by my tenants, and questions are discussed, Several conversa-partly by the State. The State neglects to tions are reported, but no Frenchman is in- pay me, and refuses to make my tenants pay troduced. The interlocutors are English- me. I can get no labour, as the robot is men, Germans, Poles, and Italians. In only abolished; and my tenants have now land of two cases are their names given. In all others they are designated by letters. It will never be published, but the author has

their own, which once was mine, to cultivate. Half of my property is gone the other half is unproductive. Austria is copying deliber

man; I am forbidden to do so; he is the only cooper near me, and the price which he charges me is more than the value of all my wine. If I go on cultivating my vineyard, it is for the cooper's benefit, not for mine." "

ately and systematically in Gallicia and Hun- | A carpenter, who is his neighbour, detected gary the example of the French Convention. him in the act of thus working at a trade She is destroying one of the few aristocra- which was not his own, summoned him becies that the Continent still possesses. She fore the magistrate, and had him fined twelve incurs, of course, the bitter hatred of the florins and costs. One of my friend's neighhigher classes. But such has been their treat- bours, who has a small vineyard, asked him ment of their inferiors, that their enmity would last year to find him a purchaser for it. 'I make her popular with the lower classes, even have been accustomed,' he said, 'to make my if she were not offering them, as she is, immedi- own casks, but a cooper in the next village ate benefits. Francis Joseph travelled over a has informed against me as an illegal worklarge portion of Hungary last year, with only one companion. The peasantry came from many miles to kneel before him along the road. It is a mistake therefore to believe, as most people do, that if Russia were to invade Hungary, she would be assisted by an insurrection. An insurrection was possible in 1849, 'The vast emigration which is going on because the Magyars then possessed the shews the prevalence of distress, and, as army, and the whole machinery of Govern- there is no redundant population, the people ment. They have neither now, and, if they attribute that distress to the exactions and moved, Austria would let loose on them the the restrictions of their governments. people. It was thus that she suppressed the sovereigns themselves are said to be preintended rising in Gallicia. I know families paring for flight. They are believed to be in that country, half the members of which scraping together all that they can, and to were cut off by their own peasants, stimu- be investing in foreign securities. lated and rewarded by the Austrian authorities."

"In fact," he continued, "Austria need only lift a finger in order to revolutionize Southern Germany. The peasantry look on Austria as their friend, and on their own sovereigns as enemies. In all that strip of country, extending from Lindau to the Rhine, which once belonged to her, her return would be hailed as a restoration."

The

'Nothing but the unpopularity of the Grand Duke of Baden enables the priests of Freibourg to resist him. The law is on his side, and so would public opinion be, were it not that the Government is always supposed to be in the wrong.

"What," I asked, "is the feeling in Prussia, as to this war?"

"It is such," he answered, "as to render our king's throne insecure. The Prince of ""Is Bavaria," I said, "disaffected?" Prussia, the heir-presumptive, is very anti"It was eminently so," he answered, Russian, and very ambitious. So is his wife, under the last king. He wasted on orna- who has great influence over him. He is mental buildings and works of art the mo- so little younger than the king, as to have ney that was voted for productive purposes, no hope of reigning unless his brother is and adorned Munich with palaces, libraries, deposed, and they are not on good terms. churches, and museums, by leaving the rest The nobility are Russian, and so are the of the country without roads, or judges, or officers of the army, who are nearly all notroops. He said that it was done out of his bles; for, it is only since 1848 that any savings, but as he obstinately refused to ac- others can hold commissions. But the Pruscount for the public expenditure, no one sian nobility are the only ignorant portion believed that his savings were lawful. One of a generally well-educated nation. They of them was to bargain with every person are slaves of their birth even more than the appointed to an office that he should accept French; for, they despise not only the learned a reduced salary, and give up to the king professions, but even the civil service of the the remainder a sure way to throw the Government. The few who have landed public service into the hands of knaves properties live on their estates, the rest enor blockheads. I know less of the present ter the army. There they think it fashionreign, but I do not hear that it is an im- able to profess Russian politics; but, as the provement. I can tell you rather more soldiers in every regiment are changed anabout Wirtemberg, as I have been passing nually by one-third, their officers have no some weeks there: One of the towns that I influence over them. The privates and sousvisited was Reutlingen. A wheelwright, who officiers retain the feelings of the classes from lives near my host, C. D., was employed in which they were taken, and to which they mending a cart. C. D. shewed him an out- are soon to return; and the feeling of those side shutter which required a fastening. The classes, that is to say, of the whole nation exnext morning he drove in a nail to fasten it. cept the nobles, is violently anti-Russian. If

the King were to join the Russians, I believe that he would be deposed, and his brother put in his place. I doubt, indeed, whether the people will allow him to remain neutral. They certainly will not if Austria joins England; they could not bear the disgrace of being the only great power that is afraid to support the cause which it professes to believe just."

Many with Russian ?" "Almost all the sovereigns; some of the aristocracy: no others.

"Between the nobles and the bürger," he continued, "there is the deeply rooted enmity of caste. Between the bürger and 'After F. left me, I called on P. I was the mere labourers, there is the jealousy ocanxious to compare the views of a Bavarian casioned by Municipal privileges and monowith those of a Prussian. polies. The higher shopkeepers and arti

"The earnest desire of Germany," said sans cling to them with the notion, so comP., "is, like that of Italy, for unity. I had mon among uneducated persons, that they a letter from Munich to-day, which the wri-profit by them. Those who do not enjoy ter ended by saying, 'We shall never do them, are, of course, opposed to them; and any good, until we have got rid of our six- this produces a sort of concert between the and-thirty kings.' But the difficulties are nobles and the bürger. Each class thinks enormous. There are differences of lan- that it has a common enemy-the mere guage, of race, and of religion; and between people. A little while ago, the King of Austrians and Prussians there are jealousies Bavaria proposed to unite all the weavers of power. Each people is willing to absorb in a corporation, with exclusive privileges. the other; but neither chooses to be ab- There are many villages where almost every sorbed. No Austrian will become a Prus- peasant has a loom in which he weaves the sian; no Prussian will be an Austrian. The cloth for his own use. If this attempt had smaller states had once the same spirit succeeded, they would all have been forced of individual nationality. When I was a to buy it from the professional weaver. He child it never entered into the head of any was obliged to give it up for the time; but Bavarian to suppose that Bavaria could be he may try it again." anything but solitary and independent. But that feeling has passed away from us. The consciousness of our weakness renders us ready to coalesce into one large empire. The two great states feel strong enough to wish to continue to be Austria and Prussia."

"Is there any national feeling," I said, "in the Rhenish provinces of Prussia?"

"There is some," said P., "or at least what does instead, a feeling that they cannot stand alone, and a determination not to be French. If they had a tolerable sovereign they would be loyal."

"What chances," I said, "would France have, if she were to attempt a revolutionary war in Germany?"

"None whatever," said P. "The Germans will resist any impulse that comes from France. They hate, in general, their own sovereigns, and their own institutions, if petty despotisms can be called institutions, but they will accept no French assistance to drive out the former, or to change the latter.

""What I fear for the smaller states," he added, "is, that having no powers of independent action, either as to foreign affairs, "In the German provinces of Austria, or even as to their own, they may sink into there is not only nationality but loyalty. apathy and torpidity. To a German who In the Slavonic provinces, and even among wishes his country to be progressive, it is the Magyars, the peasantry are loyal. They painful to think that in the greater part of love the central Government for its revolu- Germany there is less real liberty now than tionary contempt of the vested rights of the there was 200 years ago. Every village nobles and landlords. The higher classes then had its local authorities and privileges, are disaffected." every town its franchises, and the electorates and free cities were virtually independent, under the loose control of the Emperor. Now every parish is interfered with by the central authority; the sovereign is supported against his subjects by the Bund, and even when the people and the sovereign are agreed as to internal reforms, the Bund steps in and prohibits them."

"Would volunteers from Vienna," I asked, "now march into Italy to crush a Venetian insurrection?"

""I will not answer," he said, "for volunteers; but I am sure that the Austrian army would. The Austrian army will do whatever its Emperor orders it to do."

666

"Are there many Socialists in Germany?" I asked.

"Very few," he answered.

"Many Republicans?"

We are told that P. is a Bavarian, and we fancy that if we had not been told so,