and my great grandson is a man of his time. I think I can resume the whole of your objections to it in a single phrase. It would be a monarchy of the tricolour and not of the fleur de lys.

CHAM. I knew it and I can see no virtue in a Restoration which instead of rallying the people to the royal standard compels the monarch to do homage to the Revolutionary flag.

PHIL. Your majesty's preferences on that point are well known. The invincible, the sacred scruple-or what was supposed to be such-which prevented you

CHAM. What was supposed to be such? I should have thought, Monseigneur, that its sincerity was sufficiently attested by the sacrifice which it compelled. What other motive could I have had for renouncing my ancestral throne?

PHIL. Renouncing it, Sire? By whom was it offered to you?

CHAM. By my faithful adherents, speaking as they declared, and as I firmly believed, in the name of France. The nation, I am assured, would have welcomed me as king in 1873. But even if resistance awaited me, what but loyalty to my conscience could have prevented me from striking a blow for my rights ?

PHIL. Shall I tell your Majesty? To do so I must use a word which is strange to the ears of kings, and which even their cousins-unless, like me, they are made the mark of accursed calumny-were seldom doomed to hear. You were afraid.

CHAM. You lie!

PHIL. Your own conscience flings you back the word! Henri, Comte de Chambord, king without a crown, and pretender without a sword! It was not the voice of duty that held you motionless within sight of the goal of your ambition: it was the whisper of fear! Scruple was silent until the hour of action struck. It was not till then that

the world heard first of the indispensable lilies, and of the white plume-in English “plume" and "feather" are the same-of Henri of Navarre.

CHAM. You dare to――

PHIL. I dare to give voice to your own unspoken thoughts. Again I say, your conscience is my witness that I speak the truth.

CHAM. So vile a slander is beneath.

But no, I cannot! It is the truth! Thou, God, who readest hearts, it is the truth! My conscience-he said well-my conscience, let me hear it, let me obey it—even though it speak to me through those polluted lips!

PHIL. Once more I repeat that.

He mutters to

himself! The imbecile is praying! Dieu de Dieu! That

a head so fit for the biretta should have been born to a crown!

EDMUND BURKE AND EDWARD HORSMAN.

BURKE. You have spoken eloquently, sir, in praise of eloquence; but I confess that the more I consider the subject, the more I wonder that oratory should ever have been regarded as an art worth cultivation by men of affairs. Its forensic successes on the great scale are indeed well known, and those of the minor sort are of everyday occurrence; but you will look in vain for any record of its achievements in the history of States. What great orator of ancient or modern times has ever saved his political party or triumphed over his political opponents, turned his countrymen from the path of danger, or guided them into the way of wisdom, by his eloquence alone? Did Demosthenes succeed in rousing the Athenians against Philip? Was it Cicero the orator or Cæsar the soldier who had his way at Rome? Did the elder Pitt contrive to save his country from the crime and folly of the American war? Or was I—if I may without immodesty cite myself -was I any happier in the same attempt? I deny not that Demosthenes and Cicero may have achieved many objects for which they laboured; the career of Pitt was as a whole transcendently successful; in more than one of my own humble political efforts I have gained my end. But

I am forced to believe that in all such cases, whether at Athens or at Rome, or in England, the politician must have had the circumstances for confederates: I cannot indeed doubt it, when I see how completely adverse circumstances are removed from his control. I cannot doubt, I say, that the opinions and wishes of his countrymen must always have favoured him from the outset if he is to succeed; since, whenever the case is reversed, I find him so powerless, even by the utmost exertion of his eloquence, to bend them to his will.

HORS. But is it quite fair, sir, to try political oratory by so severe a test? Are we bound to assume all conditions adverse to its success before we are entitled to assign any value to it as a political instrument ?

BURKE. Surely yes. In what other way can we estimate its power? Nay, to what less severe a test do we subject forensic oratory every day? The success of the advocate is measured by the hostility of the tribunal before whom he pleads—whether that hostility be due to the strength of their prejudices or to the weakness of his case. Nor is it deemed any credit to him to win his cause, unless these conditions are first assumed against him.

HORS. Still, sir, the advocate's task bears no comparison in point of difficulty with that of the politician; the practice of the court to which he appeals is in many cases so vastly in the former's favour. The jury decides after, at the most, a few hours' deliberation; the country may take months or years to consider its decision.

BURKE. So much the worse, no doubt, for the rhetorician, but so much the better for the reasoner. And yet with all

this time allowed for his arguments to win their way to the minds of his countrymen, he fails.

HORS. I own, sir, that I do not highly rate the influence of reasoning in political matters, and therefore, that I set no great store by that large allowance of time which is granted to the politican. Most political reasoning is over the heads of the mass of those to whom it is addressed, as, with submission, Mr. Burke, was but too often the case with your own; while that which is comprehensible to their understandings is either superfluous or futilesuperfluous if it approves itself to their views of their own interests, futile if it does not.

BURKE. When opposed to the true interests of a country it is not desirable that any arguments should be successful. But it is the function of sound political reasoning to enable men to distinguish between their true advantage and its delusive semblance. Are we really to believe that the skilled and upright political orator is incapable of rendering that service to the State? I have already shown you that I am tempted to accept that view myself; but I feel that to adopt it finally would be to despair of political progress.

HORS. I do not perceive that consequence, sir, unless indeed we are to assume that the people are mistaken as to their true interests more often than not. On the opposite assumption, their inaccessibility to reasonings which (on such an assumption) must of course be more often than not fallacious, would be a proof of political development. May we not say, indeed, that the main result of all political progress is, or should be, to relieve oratory of its functions? Surely the ideal condition of a community would be that