Page:Charactersevents00ferriala.djvu/268

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I have described it, resembles closely the craze for imperialism that about ten years ago agitated England. It is true, for imperialism in the time of Caesar was what has existed for the last half century in England--a means of which one part of the historic aristocracy availed itself to keep power and renew decaying prestige, satisfying material interests and flattering with intoxications of vanity the pride of the masses. So, too, the contesting parties in France--the socialist, which represents the labouring classes; the radical, which represents the middle classes; the progressive and the monarchic, which represent the wealthy burghers and the aristocracy--may discover some of their passions, their doings, their invectives, in the political warfare that troubled the age of Caesar; in those scandals, those judicial trials, in that furor of pamphlets and discourses. This is so true, that in consequence my book met a singular fate in France; that of being adopted by each party as an argument in its own favour. Drumont made use of it to demonstrate to France what befalls a country when it allows its national spirit to be corrupted by foreign influx, seeking to persuade his fellow-citizens that the Jews in France do the same work of intellectual and moral dissolution that the Orientals brought