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at least to make a Govern- two combined how can you make anything? ment on grounds of pure argument and The antagonism is as perfect as between reason. But at once comes the difficulty plus and minus; you can make up no comthat there is in France a great want of what pound; you can find no intermediate term; Lord Bacon called "dry light." Every you must choose between the two. opinion there is, in the Baconian language, The selection can, we fear, only be made "steeped in the humours of the affections." by force; hitherto at least it has been so. There is no large number and no powerful Paris is France for the purpose of making a order of persons holding opinions on the Government, but it is not France for the purgrounds of reason or argument. Poor pose of keeping a Government. The ParProvost-Paradol used to maintain that the isians put in a Republic by revolution educated bourgeoisie in Paris and in a few resting more or less on socialism and the other towns was such a body, but he ad- artisans. The Republic, as its nature remitted its powerlessness, and he was him- quires, appeals to the people—that is, to self an example of it. When he became a the country. In response to the appeal candidate for Nantes, he could not obtain back comes an assembly full of dislike to votes enough to make a decent minority. the socialistic Republic — above all things Neither the party for the Empire nor the anxious for property- full of the panic of party against it cared for him and his reasons. the proprietary peasantry. And then beBut in default of political reasons there are gins the strife between the conservative in France two intense political passions Chamber and the innovating moba strife the passion of property among the country which is too keen and internecine to be peasants, and the passion for socialism confined to words only - which soon takes among the town ouvriers. And, unhappily, to arms and to the streets, and settles the these passions are entirely opposed. So- victory there. If the Republic asks France cialism" is an obscure term, and the idea not for a Chamber but for a President, the in the minds of those who cleave to it is of result will be the same in essence. The the vaguest and wildest kind; still, on the President will be, as Louis Napoleon was, whole, it means a system wishing to amend the nominee of the country; while the Re property - a system incompatible with public was, like the present Republic, the present property. The passionate part of choice of the towns. the Republicans in 1848, the only part of them who were eager and many, meant more or less distinctly what Louis Blanc said distinctly. He aimed avowedly at a system in which wages received should be proportionate not to work done but to wants felt. He would have given a man with many children much and a man with few children little, and he would have taxed without limit existing property for that object. A still more violent reasoner invented the celebrated phrase “La propriété, c'est le vol," or Property is robbery." And this is only a strict deduction from the elementary wish of socialists that all men are to “start fair." In that case all inherited property is unjust, and all gifts among the living by which the children of the rich become better off than the children of the poor are unjust too. Both violate the equality of the start; both make life an adjusted and 'handicapped" race an existence where accidental advantages impair or outweigh intrinsic qualities. Roughly it may be said that the main desire of the city socialists in France, on grounds more or less honest, is to attack property; and that the sole desire of the country peasants is, on grounds more or less selfish, to maintain property. And between the two how can you mediate? or, out of the

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And the worst is that the most desirable Governments for France, as a philosopher. or at any rate as an Englishman would judge, are very popular nowhere. The political Republic-the Republic without socialism-the Orleanist monarchy-appeal neither to the passions of the country nor to those of the towns. The peasant does not connect them with his terre; the ouvrier does not connect them with his schemes. They rest on pure reason, and are weak accordingly. The Parliamentary system the best form of free Government, as we believe is an exotic in France, and has never yet thriven there. And the defect goes very deep. Frenchmen as yet have never shown themselves able to bear exciting discussion. A French Assembly at a critical moment is not a deliberating Senate, but a yelling mob. Everybody speaks or cries; no one hears; and an ineffectual President rings incessantly the bell which calls members to order, but to which no member attends. Outside it is the same. Each man reads his own newspaper, becomes more and more enamoured of its "logic," but he does not read the journals of his opponents. He does not put his first principles side by side with theirs and see fairly which is best. French parties are more like sects in religion than like our Eng

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