Page:The Royal Family of France (Henry).djvu/47

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Current History of France.
41

weak and unspirited conduct. Those men teach the younger generation to despise all that makes a nation's history glorious, all that was sacred and fertile and noble in its past, and by undermining all its reverence for old age, destroying its faith in the present and its hope in the future. The "Path of Shame" entered on in France by present Republicans is enough to cause the very shadow of a semi-Napoleonic Gambetta to disappear behind the woods of Ville d'Avray.

This inconsistency of the Republican so-called Politicians of France, is a revolting sight for a Frenchman open to common-sense and self-respect; but surely it is a not less comical one for foreigners. Meanwhile let us leave these Democrats and all birds of the same feather now advancing in Paris to the care of MM. Gambetta, Madier de Montjau, and Clémenceau. "Qui vivra, verra." No statesman, no Frenchman worthy of the name, could contemplate gladly the sure consequences of such a policy; and such maniacs would quickly be sent, by Englishmen at all events, to Coventry.

"Revenant à nos moutons."—The historian is concerned with the nation. Let us hope only that France may yet have the power to raise herself from the shameful entanglements, at home and abroad, into which she is forced daily by her weak and incapable Government in the present. All non-excitable and non-sensitive Frenchmen of influence in good society should give up all fine declamations, and set to the more reasonable duty of teaching their prejudiced (because ignorant) and thoughtless countrymen, the duty of refuting and dissipating the untrue, insulting, and outrageous teaching spread in the crowd by unfair, impudent and unpatriotic writers. It is the sacred duty of influential and experienced citizens in a land, it is their primary and binding task, to lead public opinion to the restoration and consecration of truth and justice, and vigorously to resist every tyrannous and unjust legislation passed by ambitious men who, deliberately and by dint of a mouldy policy, seduce the simple faith of the good, trade upon the animal instincts of the lower and least equitable classes of society, and selfishly sacrifice both the present and future of their native country in order to impose their intolerant, dishonest, immoral and repulsive opinions in the