rester fidèle d, la Republique et de défendre la Constitution." Events from November 21st and December 2nd, 1852, up to July 19th, 1870, have dearly proved to France the third Napoleon's perjuries and villanous hypocrisy. "Harm hatch, harm catch! " The immediate cause of the Third Republic, was indeed a national disaster for which it was not responsible. But under the pretence of assisting its country in the hour of danger, it finished and completed her defeat and ruin.
Ninety years have just passed since Republicanism first made its fatal apparition in the kingdom of Philip-Augustus, St. Louis, Francis I., Henry IV., and Louis XIV. Its work of ruin, blood and hatred, is too well known. It murdered judicially a King who was a political martyr, whatever the Rappel may say when it praises Lakanal, not because the latter was a learned man, but because he was a regicide.[1]
We admit that the First Republic had one title to glory, which up to the present time the Third Republic cannot claim. It possessed great Generals, such as Marceau, Kléber, Hoche, whose brilliant genius could not be eclipsed even by that of General Bonaparte. It therefore achieved military successes that in the eyes of the historian have outbalanced the political crimes, the blood-stained drama of the scaffold under the Convention, the Saturnalian orgies of the corrupt Directory.
The Third Republic has nothing yet to place to its credit side which can balance the sad memories of the disorders and crimes of the Commune; and it is to be feared that, like the First Republic, its latter days will end in drivelling idiotcy. The French are already in the thickest mire of the Directory, which may lead to the decline of France and to her ruin.
This is what the Republican Voltaire declares will be. And that this sinister prophecy may not be fulfilled, we know of but one preventive, which is the revival of public opinion, the strenuous efforts of the sensible partisans of Monarchy, whose assistance
- ↑ It reminds one of the remark of Dr. Livingstone, who, when he was asked why the presence of missionaries was so distasteful to Europeans in Africa, replied: "It is because they feel that the pure and holy lives of those good men are a reproach to themselves and to their own mode of life on the continent."
