Page:Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy, 1738-1914 - ed. Jones - 1914.djvu/89

 existed; treaties of peace were broken, and war carried everywhere, without that body having any share in those measures. The same Directory, after having intimidated all Europe, and destroyed, at its pleasure, several Governments, neither knowing how to make peace or war, or how even to establish itself, was overturned by a breath, on the 13th Prairial (June 18), to make room for other men, influenced, perhaps, by different views, or who might be governed by different principles. Judging, then, only from notorious facts, the French Government must be considered as exhibiting nothing fixed, neither in respect to men or to things.'

Here, then, is the picture, down to the period of the last revolution, of the state of France under all its successive Governments!

Having taken a view of what it was, let us now examine what it is. In the first place, we see, as has been truly stated, a change in the description and form of the sovereign authority; a supreme power is placed at the head of this nominal republic, with a more open avowal of military despotism than at any former period; with a more open and undisguised abandonment of the names and pretences under which that despotism long attempted to conceal itself. The different institutions, republican in their form and appearance, which were before the instruments of that despotism, are now annihilated; they have given way to the absolute power of one man, concentrating in himself all the authority of the State, and differing from other monarchs only in this, that, as my honourable friend truly stated