say, "It is only an extempore affair. Men drunk with new
power are telling their fancies, and trying in their heat to make laws thereof." It is not so. The ideas I have hinted at have been long known and deeply cherished by the best minds in France. Last autumn, M. Lamartine, in his own newspaper, for the deputy for Macon is an editor, published the "Programme and confession of his political faith."[1]
Others say, "The whole thing seems rash." Well, so it does; so does any good thing seem rash to all except the man who does it, and such as would do it if he did not. What is rash to one is not to another. It is dangerous for an old man to run, fatal for him to leap, while his grandson jumps over wall and ditch without hurt. The American Eevolution was a rash act; the English Revolution a rash act; the Protestant Reformation was a rash act. Was it safe to withstand the Revolution? Did the king of the French find it so? Yet others say, "The leaders are unknown." "Lamartine, you might as well put any man in the street at the head of the nation." But when the American Revolution begun, who, in England, had ever heard of John Hancock, President of the Congress? To the men who knew him, John Hancock was a country trader, the richest man in a town of ten thousand inhabitants: that did not sound very great at London. Samuel Adams, and John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, and all the other men, what did the world know of them? Only that they had been christened with Hebrew names. Why, George Washington was only, as Gen. Braddock called him, "A young Buckskin." But the world heard of these men afterwards. Let us leave the French statesmen to make to the future what report of themselves they can! Let me tell a story of Dupont de l’Eure, the head of the government at this moment. He was one of the movers of the Revolution of 1830. He dined with the citizen king, once, in some council. At the table, he and the king differed; the king affirmed, and Dupont denied. Said the king, "Do you tell me I lie?" Said Dupont, "When the king says yes, and Dupont de l’Eure replies no, France will know which to believe!" The king said, "Yes, we
- ↑ See the Courier des Etats Unis, for Nov. 24, 1847, which contains passages from M. Lamartine's programme, which set forth all the schemes that the provisional government had afterwards tried to carry out.
