Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 125.djvu/523

Rh order and liberty," and all, whatever be their political preferences, ought to unite to protect French society against intrigues which compass its destruction.

This profession of faith is a tribute to the wisdom of those Republicans who consented to include in the new Constitution a clause providing for its revision. There was much to be said against the introduction of such a clause, and it must be admitted that the inconveniences arising out of it have not yet been fully tested. But against these inconveniences, great as they may prove to be, must be set the fact that the concession of the right of revision opened a way for the adhesion of royalists to the new republic which, without it, would have remained hopelessly closed. There are three degrees of comparison in the royalist section of French society — those who will admit of neither postponement nor compromise, those who will admit of postponement but not of compromise, and those who will consent to both. Those of the ﬁrst degree are necessarily ranked as irreconcilables. If they are not at this moment striking a last blow for their king, it is only because their king and they alike see that such a last blow could do neither of them anything but harm. Those of the third degree have long been willing to co-operate in founding the republic. Their adhesion was secured in theory when M. Gambetta announced that all that the advanced Republicans demanded in an ally was a recognition that the republic was the only government that remained possible in France. This recognition was not incompatible with the conviction that the only possible government was in itself an extremely bad one, and only to be accepted as being immeasurably better than no government at all. But this concession on the part of the advanced Republicans did nothing for royalists like M. de Meaux. They are willing to accept the republic as the legal government of France, and in that character to pay it due respect and homage. But they will not put aside the hope that time and experience may yet bring Frenchmen to a wiser mind. They have no wish to see the republic overthrown by force or undermined by fraud. So long as the country retains its present temper they are Republicans, because the majority of Frenchmen are Republicans, an consequently the republic is the only government that can be maintained, except by the sword. But supposing that as years pass away they should see reason to think that the majority of Frenchmen have discovered their mistake, and that if the Constitutional Laws had to be voted again they would be cast in a monarchical form. they will not promise not to take advantage of this change of temper. Under the Republican Constitution, as settled by the vote of the 25th of February, there is no need for them to give any such pledge. They have only to admit that until this change of temper comes the republic exists by right as well as in fact. They are not asked to deny their honest convictions; they are only called upon to prove by their acts that no conviction of theirs, however deep or however clear, has any right to impress itself on the form of government until it has become the conviction of the great body of their countrymen.

The recognition of the right of revision has made it possible for men to be at once honest royalists and honest republicans, and in this combination M. de Meaux sees a prospect of overcoming the enemies which have proved too formidable for all former republics. On the day, he says, on which good citizens and men of order rise unanimously and march united the social danger will be averted. If M. de Meaux can succeed in communicating this belief to French Conservatives he will have been more instrumental than any member of the coalition Cabinet in closing the future against Republican excesses, and their inevitable complement, Imperialist reaction. In former revolutions the Conservatives throughout the country have been inactive either from despair or from interest. The majority of them have thought it useless to take any part in politics, and have preferred to sit by the stream in the hope that it would at length run itself out. The minority have welcomed the excesses into which this inaction has tempted the Republicans, because these very excesses made it easier for them to build upon the fears of their countrymen the particular Conservative government which best ministered to their own advancement. It would be idle to say that the danger to which M. de Meaux refers has ceased to exist. It is less formidable in many ways than it was, because the elements which compose it have been brought under visible control, and have no longer the power of getting the command of public aﬁairs by a single blow. It has been proved that the party of order is strong enough to reduce Paris to subjection, and to keep