ment of internal improvements and development of the commercial, industrial, and agricultural interests of the nation, and even with its universal franchise, was nevertheless essentially a despotism.

Its greatest achievement in the way of social and political progress was the promulgation of the Code Napoleon, which, taken all in all, is the most perfect and comprehensive system of law provided by the mind of man, until the appearance of the six New York codes and the codes of California. There is no occasion in this work to trace the history of France throughout the vicissitudes that followed the downfall of the first empire, until its reëstablishment in the second empire, the overthrow of which, and succession by a new republic, are matters of contemporaneous history. Still, this may be said here, in proper connection with the general tendency of this work: that at no time of her history has France made such rapid strides of advancement in every department of human progress as during the present republican rule. All the gilded prosperity of the second empire, that faded away at one blow with the Sedan surrender, is as nothing when compared with the real prosperity of the France of to-day, dismembered as she is by the loss of two of her finest provinces, and still suffering from the life loss of thousands of her brave citizens and the money loss of twelve milliards of francs. Nor is it out of thể way here to express my conviction that the present French republic, if it establishes my money system and keeps down monopolies, will be a permanent factor in politics, and that around it will centre all the achievements of republican freedom in Europe.

There is at the present time, and will probably be for many years to come, more wealth, prosperity, individual industry, frugality, and virtue in much-slandered France than in any other country of Europe.

CHAPTER VII.

THE SWISS REPUBLIC.

Of all countries in Europe, it is only in Switzerland that the attempt to establish a rational form of federative government has been thus far crowned with success; although the introduction of

the referendum- - whereby the laws, after their enactment by the legislative council of the Swiss Confederation, are submitted to the approval of the people-has, of late, greatly shaken the confidence of statesmen in the perpetuity of its institutions. Besides, the Constitution of the Confederation is defective in not providing a sufficient bond of union between the Cantons; and they are mainly dependent upon foreign countries and bankers for their monetary means of intercommunication and commercial and business exchanges.

A most oppressive aristocracy of landed proprietors has also become established, which may eventually destroy the liberties of the people, by absorbing nearly all the political powers and official positions in the different Cantons. This predominance of a landed aristocracy, the keystone of the feudal system, gives great solidity to the Swiss Confederation; but the result is the same there as elsewhere: to impoverish the masses of the people, and eventually force them into the same helpless labor slavery that prevails in England, China, Russia, and other countries where the same sort of aristocracy prevails.

The most striking feature of the Swiss form of government, however, is the referendum system, to which I have already alluded. The question which it involves is, in short, this: Is it wise that the legislative body should have absolute power to pass låws, or should each law be submitted to a direct vote of the people, after having been passed by the legislature?

The arguments in favor of the system are chiefly these: The people are compelled to become acquainted with the laws of their country; no private law can be smuggled through a legislative body and become effective, unless the people at large agree to its justice; and in this respect it is the only real democratic form of government.

The main arguments against it are, that it is liable to abuse, and gives rise to a class of pure demagogues; that it is excessively cumbersome and expensive; and, finally, that it places ignorance on an improper footing of equality with education and intellect.

As yet the system must be considered merely an experiment; nor will its success show that it could be made applicable to so extensive a country as our own.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE BRITISH EMPIRE.

Though in the more northern monarchies of Europe - Denmark, Norway and Sweden there is more real republican freedom than in Great Britain, still the British Empire lays claim to having the most purely popular form of government in all Europe. Now, it is very true that in Great Britain the representation of property, the integrity of the judiciary, and the universality of the laws for the encouragement of commerce and manufactures have certainly thus far produced commercial, trading, and manufacturing prosperity, but only at the fearful cost of enslaving labor and impoverishing the masses. Still, the landed aristocracy of Great Britain, created by the feudal system and holding the principal landed estates in the kingdom, has not been able to absorb the common liberties of the British subjeet to such an extent as to destroy them altogether, because the new sources of profitable employment opened up to the industrious middle classes in new colonies, the new powers applied to mechanics, and the new fields of wealth in gold, silver, commerce, banking, and exchanges, have raised many members of the poorer and middle classes to almost an equality in wealth with the richest peers of the realm.

On the other hand, while the Established Church has encountered too many opposing sects to become a very dangerous hierarchical element, save so far as it is united with the State, the royal charters, the money despotisms, the other powerful companies and monopolies existing in the British Empire, have always been held in check more or less by the hereditary aristocracy of the House of Lords, which overshadows and balances all other prerogatives. But the multitudinous complications of the British administration of public affairs, with its false systems of law, of government, of religious establishments, of education, and of the management of the colonies, cannot continue for any considerable period of time longer, and a revolution is now threatening which will in all probability result in the peaceable establishment of a republican federative government over the empire and all its colonies. This would at once place the new republic of Great Britain in the front rank with the most powerful nations of the

world, and relieve her people from the intolerable burdens of the feudal system, and all the aristocracies and monopolies that have followed in its train.

It has been well said that a revolution in Great Britain would not be a French revolution, accompanied by scenes of bloodshed, devastation, and carnage, but one moving in a quiet way for the creation of constitutional safeguards and just representative systems, to secure political equality under wise and harmonious codes, to be established by the people in solemn conventions.

The Magna

It will be the best for all the subjects of that country to unite in this grand movement for the common good; for if the aristocracies of monopolies or of birth force on a conflict between the people and themselves, the issue cannot be doubtful, and the losses will fall necessarily upon the parties now in possession of all that is valuable in the kingdom, and their utter ruin will be inevitable. For men are but men everywhere, with similar gifts, endowments, and passions. The hungry English laborer and the hungry French laborer have the same cravings for bread, for freedom, for equal political rights, and will not hesitate to use the same means to satisfy that craving. In truth, history would rather teach us that the Englishman is quicker to assert his rights, and more determined in removing every obstacle in the way of their assertion, than the Frenchman. Charta was extorted from King John by the English barons while the kings of France were preparing for the subjection of their nobles, which Louis XIII. and Louis XIV. consummated. King Charles I. was beheaded long before the French followed the English example. But while the descendants of the Norman conquerors, who appropriated nearly all the best lands of England, are still in possession of their vast estates, in France the lands of the nobles were divided among the people in the great revolution of 1789; and it is not improbable that the people of England, if forced into a revolutionary conflict with the ruling aristocracies, will naturally employ the same revolutionary measures to have those vast estates divided among the descendants of the former owners, which the French people found themselves compelled to employ.

No society can long keep its equilibrium that has at the one end such colossal wealth as, for instance, that of the Marquis of Westminster, with his annual income of more than $2,000,000, and at the other end full a million of penal paupers, several millions more of all

kinds of laborers just on the verge of pauperism, and all of them suffering from impurity and ignorance; that hoards in the very centre of its civilization thousands upon thousands of men almost as fierce and lawless as the Goths and Huns that overran Europe under Attila, or the Tartars of Tamerlane, or the wretches of Faubourg St. Antoine, while it lavishes the money that should be spent at home, upon their physical and intellectual improvement, in Afghan, Crimean, Abyssinian, and Zulu wars, in enormous salaries of useless kings and queens, and extravagant subsidies and dowers expended with the same profusion on all their children and relatives; that, forced on the one hand to make franchise more and more universal in the House of Commons, still retains, on the other hand, the only hereditary chamber in Europe, the House of Peers, a titled plutocracy, holding its vast entailed estates free of all military or civil duties, enjoying all the benefits of the feudal system without performing any of its duties, and whose only purpose of existence seems to be to veto every reform proposed by the representatives of the people in the House of Commons.

But the worst stain on the escutcheon of Great Britain, and its greatest danger, lies in its treatment of Ireland, a vital part of its own immediate bodily organization. There has been for two and a half centuries, and there is now in Ireland an amount of suffering, changing into downright disloyalty to the British government, fully equal to the suffering and consequent disloyalty which put Louis XVI. on the guillotine. This suffering and discontent in Ireland is produced by substantially the same causes which heralded the French revolution, namely, the holding of lands in large bodies by a few individuals; but in Ireland the evil is aggravated by the fact, that even those few land-owners are non-residents, and spend the money derived from their leaseholds in all other countries except Ireland, whereas in Scotland and England most of those land-owners are residents, and spend their money at home. In Ireland, the ownership of the lands was originally in the people, and was alienated from them and vested in a few persons, by a most outrageous system of confiscation on the part of England, after the battle of the Boyne. In other words, the feudal system of land tenure, with its laws of entail and primogeniture, was forced upon Ireland long after it had become a settled affair in England by the conquest, and the Irish have never been disposed to submit to it. Besides, the development of industry