be caught in the act. Such answers as we | But the Philistine is so delightfully stupid have suggested to the impeachment of Louis as to be one of those good members of Napoleon are precisely similar to the pleas society who make a fortune, and live re that might be suggested in favour of Bill spectably, or, at the worst die in the odour Sykes. Caligula could be defended on of sanctity and pecuniary debt. Napoleon similar grounds; so could Fouquier Tin- the Great, on the other hand, added the ville; so, whatever may have been the selfishness of a Philistine to the intellect of opinion of Macaulay, could Barrère; and a Titan. He was a monster, not because so could that paragon of activity and filial he lacked a conscience, but, as Prevostpiety, Troppmann, who killed a whole Paradol justly indicates, because the strength French family in order to provide for his of his conscience bore no relation to the poor relations. strength of his brain. His aim was to make himself the first man in all the world, and then, let us not doubt, to give the world such justice of law, such success of commerce, such breadth of culture, and such grandeur of aim as it had never known before. All things were to be done for mankind, if only mankind would permit the work to be executed by Napoleon, and only allow the glory to be his. All things must be done by him. whatever might be the cost in tears and blood. And, indeed, how trivial must the tears and blood of a few million people, during one paltry generation, have seemed to a Napoleon, with his eyes forecasting the results of a thousand years, and a time when history should speak of Napoleon in the same breath with Cæsar and Charlemagne! It was as natural for such a man to waste a million lives as it is for a British Philistine to effect a huge transaction on the Stock Exchange, and thus to beggar his neighbour, if he receive early intelligence of the fact that France has declared war against Prussia, or that the army of Marshal MacMahon has capitulated at Sedan. The Philistine cannot understand how a Napoleon can be so wicked, for precisely the same reason as he cannot understand Kant's " Philosophy of the Unconditioned." He fails to follow the windings, and the impulses, and the flights of a Satanic intellect, not because he himself is too pure to have a sympathetic comprehension of the promptings of evil, but because he is too unimaginative to conceive crimes of Napoleonic grandeur, and too stupid to follow the reflective process of a Napoleonic brain. And yet there have been Philistines whose own career in the world of commerce had somewhat of a Napoleonic sweep. There have been speculators for whom the world has seemed too small. And as railway, or as cotton, or as stock-jobbing kings, those men have been mighty conquerors, with grand aims and without scruples, the artificers of colossal work, and the authors of the ruin which has fallen on a million homes. Such men, if they were able to analyze the motives by which they have been driven from the slum of the huckster

However, it is a weary task to shriek out accusations against the Ex-Emperor; the task of interest is to understand the man, by looking into what he is pleased to call his conscience, as we should look into a curious watch, that always revealed its presence by loud ticking, and always told a lie about the time of day. The real explanation of his acts is, we believe, to be found in the theory by which Prevost-Paradol accounts for the moral aberrations of the First Napoleon. In perhaps the most remarkable passage ever penned by the unhappy journalist, it is contended that the great Napoleon wrote on the page of history an everliving record of selfish ambition and gigantic crime, not because he was morally worse than the mass of men, but because in point of intellect he was immeasurably greater. Morally, Napoleon I. was an average man, that is to say, he was selfish enough to prefer himself and his family to the nation, which had cast itself at his feet, and given its destiny into his keeping. He did, on a vast scale, what is done on a small by the average British Philistine, who fancies that to make one's family comfortable, and to pay one's rates, and to undersell one's neighbour is the whole duty of man. But the average British Philistine is so wretchedly endowed with brain, and so incapable of following any train of thought to its logical result, that he cannot conceive any aims grander than those of the counting-house, or any code of right and wrong other than that furnished by the parson. Thus his selfishness has little room to act. He is like a cow tethered in a field of clover, and with a bandage over its eyes, so that it cannot stray beyond a small circle, or see that the sweet clover stetches far beyond its little orbit in a billowy expanse of green. If the ordinary British Philistine were as richly endowed with intellect as with selfishness, these islands would be made uninhabitable in a week, and the children of light would be forced to beg that Von Moltke would smite the Philistines" from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same."

to the throne of the commercial dictator, ligion, and in his uncle a Messiah. He could reveal with terrible vividness the worshipped at the shrine of Napoleon, and temptations that lure on a Bonaparte from the one aim of his life was to ride into suthe position of a humble citizen of the Re-preme power over France on the wings of public to that of an autocrat. Such men his uncle's fame, his uncle's system of gov are seized with the idea that it would be a ernment, his uncle's schemes for universal magnificent feat to bridge the Channel, peace. He found Louis Philippe in the since the link would make France and Eng-way, but why should he permit his way to land friends for ever, and since, before all things, the iron highway from island to continent would give undying fame and boundless power to him by whom it should be executed. So, in season and out of season, the plans are thrust on the notice of the world. The world is careless; it must be stimulated by eloquent prophecies. It is sceptical; it must be convinced by facts. It is dull of comprehension; the facts must be arrayed in the garb of that rhetoric which uses adjectives only of the superlative degree. The world fails to see the meaning of facts; it must be taught truth by means of lies. It does not know its own interest: so it must be treated like a baby by the Napoleon of the Stock Exchange. And yet one day the Napoleon finds that, in spite of all his good intentions, the mighty scheme for binding nations together by means of iron rods has signally failed; that the sea has washed the fabric away; that his schemes have driven a thousand families to eat the bread of charity or toil; and that, strange as the fact may seem, he, the Napoleon of his age, is pursued into exile by the curses of those to whom he meant to be a second Providence.

be blocked by a man who was the type of bourgeois vulgarity, and whose aims were desperately common-place; whose crowning ambition was to enrich his family, and whose parade of love for the plebeians was so hollow that, as Heine sarcastically said, he always used the same old dirty glove to cover the hand with which he shook the hands of his unwashed subjects? Louis Philippe must be put out of the way. So must the Republic, with its blustering, its quarrelling, and its inability to comprehend the grandeur of the scheme which had been unfolded by Prince Louis Bonaparte in the comments on the ideas of his uncle. A coup d'état must be effected, and the Republic must bear the blame of the unfortunate necessity. The subsequent massacre was an unhappy incident; but the Republic must bear the blame of that too; Persigny had sworn to that fact with abundant gusto. If untruths must be told and lives sacrificed, in order to found the Empire, the plan, after all, had the warrant of all time. For, whatever might be said by the theologians, evil had uniformly been done in order to bring forth good. That was Nature's plan; that was the only plan open to a great Thus we get a clue to the nature of the statesman; and that should be the plan of man who, after destroying the French Re- Louis Napoleon. When men talked of mopublic, and ruling France for twenty years rality, he asked what they meant, and with sagacity and success, plunged into the showed, by a small expenditure of subtlety, most foolish as well as the most unprovoked that they were building houses upon the war recorded in modern history, and ended sand. It was easy for so able a man to dehis career in the mightiest capitulation molish the foundations of the Philistine known to military annals. The personal morality, and easy to laugh at the bugbears ability of Napoleon III. has been exaggerat- which the priests had instilled into his wife, ed by his admirers. He does not stand on a passion for masses as well as for crinothe same plane as his uncle, to whom nature line. And, moreover, the system of Imhad given one of those originating and or- perialism would shower such abundant ganizing brains which she fashions once in blessings on France and Europe as could a thousand years. Nor, in diplomatic sub-never rain down from the arid sky of a Retlety, fertility of resource, or sagacious audacity of plan, is he the equal of such men as Cavour and Bismarck. But he acquired immense power from the profound study of one political system, and the fanatical belief in one political idea. He was a Bonapartist by conviction as well as by blood. The worship of his uncle's name, and the study of his uncle's plans, had taught him to regard the system of Imperialism with some such faith as the devotee regards the mission of the Church. In Imperialism he found a re

public or a Monarchy. Italy should be free and united; Mexico should be a great Empire, the representative in America of the Latin races, and the rival of the United States; while France should be made as rich as England by the influences of freetrade. The scheme did not lack grandeur; it lacked nothing but justice and truth. It forgot but one thing the existence of a moral law. It has failed, as all such schemes will fail in a world of freedom. A high priest of the religion of Selfishness, Louis

Napoleon now expiates in exile the sins which he committed in the day when the magic of his uncle's name, and the worship of his uncle's system, gave him such power as comes, perhaps, only once in a generation to any of the children of men.

From The Economist.
AUSTRALIAN FEDERATION.

different form enlarges the view of their electors, tempts them to overlook petty drawbacks in their representatives, and gradually fosters that first of political virtues, a readiness to make sacrifices. For instance, a central Government in Australia would very soon require the control and the produce of the Customs, now the sheet-anchor of Australian taxation. Hence a new and a higher view of the pressure inflicted by tariffs, a readiness to endure direct taxation, and a new and much-wanted appreciation of the uses of economy. The pride of THE movement reported from Australia nationality moreover, sure to spring up in a in favour of federation has, we imagine, the federation with a special name and a sepafull consent of the Colonial Office, even if rate place in the world, is an element in it was not suggested from this side, and we political culture, and so is the sense of trust that as it advances it will receive the community with other and allied States warm support of the English public. From situated in the same region, united by any possible point of view except one the similar interests, and having for a common federation of these colonies will be an ad- object equal burdens. The Australians vantage to themselves, to Great Britain, have hitherto had none of these things, their and the world. It might be a disadvantage relation to England having been too much if Great Britain ever contemplated the idea that of the grown-up child to its parent of holding them by force, but as that is that is, no disciplinary relation at all, exgiven up even by the strongest Imperialists cept in extreme cases recurring but once in the objection may be dismissed without dis- a generation. Then federation is better for cussion. Federation will be an advantage England, because the colonies must either to the Australians themselves, because it be allies or dependents, and in either case will introduce into their politics just that an increase in their power must be an addiamount of complication which is necessary tion to ours. This is peculiarly the case in to produce statesmen. The defect of colo- Australia, which is clearly adapted by its nial politics as a training school for Govern- position to become a great maritime State; ment is a certain simplicity, or to take a to maintain fleets rather than armies; to phrase from a different region of thought perform, in fact, functions which can be a certain lowness of type, as of an organism performed effectively only by considerable not yet fully developed. The colonists Powers. Any country can have an army if have no frontiers, no foreign affairs, no ex- it will put its whole people into the field, ternal yet ever present restraining influence; but only a country of a certain width of rethey have no one to consult but themselves, source can keep an armed fleet at sea. nothing to fear except a change in local Ireland could maintain a great army, but public opinion. The consequence is that, not great squadrons. And finally the exlike Anglo-Indians, they become very clever periment must, in the long run, be beneficial but very narrow reasoners, think much too to the world. It is impossible to glance at little of obstacles, and are apt to grow into the map and not see that the work of "exvehement doctrinaries of the parochial kind. ploiting," civilizing, and, may be, of conFederation does much to correct all this. quering the Southern half of the shattered The relations between the provinces and Continent, which we call the Indian Archithe Central Government soon require deli- pelago, with its magnificent islands, savage cate adjustment, self-restraint, a habit of races, and tropical products, must fall ultiregarding circumstances other than those mately to the rulers of the Australian Conof the immediate locality, which all tend to tinent, that we are too far off, Holland too widen men's minds, and take them out of an weak, and all other nations too occupied or otherwise narrow groove. The sense of im- too indifferent. That great task will be mense and general responsibilities solem- much facilitated by the creation of a central nizes politicians, while the same sense in a Government.

From The Economist. [ity, especially in France (and we shall be glad to be wrong); but still every appearance shows that Europe has not now to deal with the permanent Government in France, but only with one of many ephemeral Governments - that the Republic is not to be counted on for duration any more than its predecessors - that, perhaps, the pre-requisites of a stable Government do not exist in France, and that if they do they are very difficult to find and satisfy.

reason.

66

The selection can, we fear, only be made by force; hitherto at least it has been so. Paris is France for the purpose of making a Government, but it is not France for the purpose of keeping a Government. The Parisians put in a Republic by revolution resting more or less on socialism and the artisans. The Republic, as its nature requires, appeals to the people—that is, to the country. In response to the appeal back comes an assembly full of dislike to the socialistic Republic-above all things anxious for property full of the panic of the proprietary peasantry. And then begins the strife between the conservative Chamber and the innovating mob-a strife which is too keen and internecine to be confined to words only-which soon takes to arms and to the streets, and settles the victory there. If the Republic asks France not for a Chamber but for a President, the result will be the same in essence. The President will be, as Louis Napoleon was, the nominee of the country; while the Re public was, like the present Republic, the choice of the towns.

pure reason - 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 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, steeped in the humours of the affections." There is no large number and no powerful order of persons holding opinions on the grounds of reason or argument. Poor Provost-Paradol used to maintain that the educated bourgeoisie in Paris and in a few other towns was such a body, but he admitted its powerlessness, and he was himself an example of it. When he became a candidate for Nantes, he could not obtain votes enough to make a decent minority. Neither the party for the Empire nor the party against it cared for him and his reasons. But in default of political reasons there are in France two intense political passions the passion of property among the country peasants, and the passion for socialism among the town ouvriers. And, unhappily, these passions are entirely opposed. "Socialism" is an obscure term, and the idea in the minds of those who cleave to it is of the vaguest and wildest kind; still, on the whole, it means a system wishing to amend property-a system incompatible with present property. The passionate part of 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

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