The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-10-17 00:00:00

HOW THE REVOLUTION WAS EFFECTED.

Instead of attempting to reform the system by lawful means,
or to change the ministers who had given offence, or to exact
punishment by the course of justice for that offence, the indig-
nation of the multitude in Paris suddenly bursts forth, because
the police threaten to stop a dinner and a procession,- an armed
mob resists the authorities; an accident renews the conflict,
after it had of itself died away ; another accident occasions un-
necessary shedding of blood; the populace, further exaspera-
ted, march to the National Assembly, and, without the assent
of any regular body whatever, proclaims a republic, of which
no one had dreamt an hour before, and nan.es as its chiefs
some half-dozen men, of whom no one had dreamt at any time,
as rulers of the state ! Then this work of some half-dozen ar-
tisans met in a printing office, and leading on two or three
thousand in a capital of one million souls, and a nation of five
and thirty, is at once perceived to have the very probable con-
sequence of uniting the ten or twelve thousand felons, chiefly
discharged galley-slaves, who are always under watch of the
police,. but always hovering about, ready for any mischief ; a
national alarm is excited, that the monarchy having been de-
stroyed in one contest, all Paris may be subjected to another
fire, pillage, masacre. So, by universal consent, the inhabi-
tants of that great capital submit to the absolute dominion of
the dictators thus suddenly appointed by a handful of armed
ruffians, headed by a shoemaker and sub-editor, and adopt, as
it it had been their own work, the new government thus pro-
claimed by that most insignificant hand, without even affecting
to ask the consent of any human being, or even to apprise any
one beforehand of what they intended to do—nay, very possi-
bly without having five minutes before formed any precise in-
tention at all.

Yes 1 yes I—this is the truth—the terrible truth I The like
of this was never before witnessed among men. I will not say
men living in a state of civil society, but among any collection
of rational beings, connected by the slightest tie, and joined
together for the common purpose of their joint defence, or their
joint operations of any kind whatever. That a total change in
their social condition should be the sudden work of a moment—
a change prepared by no preceding plan—prompted by no felt
inconvenience—announced by no complaint—that all which
had before been adopted by the approval more or less general,
of the nation, at any rate submitted to in peace by all, should
be instantaneously renounced, rejected, cast off, and every ves-
tige be swept away of what had existed with unusual acquies-
cence, and an entirely new order of things—an order in all
particulars new, devised without the least deliberation, struck
out a heat, created off-hand as quick as a ready speaker can
off-hand utter half a dozen sentences unpremeditated—that a
few minutes by the clock should intervene between the old,
obsolete, annihilated, and the span-new, untried and even un-
thought-of—truly this is a convulsion to which no former re-
volution ever known in the world offers the least parallel.
The following, on the benefits of agitating the masses,
is true in all times, sea3ons, and countries :
The trade of the agitator, the professional mischief-maker,
should in every possible way be discouraged. As long as every
idle, good-for-little person can be assured that if he only de-
votes himself to stirring up the people on any ground, either as
a canting-preacher of grievances, or a quack distributor of re-
medies, lie will both become a popular favourite and earn a
subsistence, rely upon it there will never be wanting many to
follow this very easy and not very honest calling, and many
more to be the dupes of their nostrums. At no period was this
abuse carried so far as during the last few years in England,
but especially in Ireland. The repeal of the Union has been a
livelihood to many; to one it was the source of great gains.
Partly on the money it yielded in large sums, partly on the
traffic which lie drove with your government for places to his
family and followers in purchase of their votes which he com-
manded, he contrived, during a considerable portion of his life,
to live on the people, as a pensioner on the poor, with the name
of a disinterested patriot.