The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1852-04-22
WYE LA BAGATELLEi


France is quiet, says the telegraphic alb
stract of the latest news. This has been the
form of the reports ever since the coup detdt
of Louis Napoleon. The Telegraph evidently
expected something else and is as much as
tonished as copper, zinc, and vitriol, can be,
that, with such electrical mobility OF constitu-
ton. the French nation holds its thunder I'M
der so complete control. France has shown,
in time past, that she could astonish galyanic
battery with her explosions also. In truth,
neither batteries nor brains can match her
performances or measure her movements. She
is an establishment, and, in the language of the
Old Testament, "a Kissing and a by-word
among the nations" The population of France
is thirty-fve millions; of these creatures, about
one million are within the walls of Paris, and
that million is the machinery by which the ma
ton is managed. at the will, alternately, of the
mobs, mountcbanks ssnkins. monkeys, and
men. who attend to the business of revolution
ling the grdnde nation Capitalization so ABB
soute and intense has no existence elsewhere
nor are its results anywhere else so striking
and so absurd No healthy mans head gov
erns his body so despotically. A live limb has
more independent instincts than any sub-city
or rural department of the commonwealth.
No man beyond the walls of the metropolis
knows whether he is citizen of the Republic,
a subject of the Empire or an atom of polit-
cal dust. kicked up in an unsettled revolution
ary row. until the arrival of the next post; nor
docs he seem to care He is cOnscript born
/ and bred; he belongs, body and soul, to the
Government and may be relied upon to vote
and fight under drill, like an automaton. In
1913, they gave five millions of votes to the name
of dead Emperor. In 1852, they added the
compliment of a couple of millions, by way of
doing due honor to their pets presumption, per-
jury, and usurpation When, in lSl8, the Provi-
sional Government maintained decent repub
lie for three months, we made the mistake OF
supposing, because there were evident good rea-
sons for the submission of the people, that it
was the reason of the nation which ruled its
conduct, and INDUCED the corresponding hope
but the submission of the last four months re-
minds us anew, that French nature and human
nature are not the same thing; nor will the
analogies Of Anglo-American philosophy any
way help the solution of the conundrum of
French history. We are entirely free from
prejudice so foolish as a grOundless national
aversion but we confess to such indignation
and contempt as ardent hopes disappointed,
and earnest principles outraged may justify.
Her Infamous history was not forgotten; but
we fondly hoped new era had brought her n
better destiny. Four years ago, she stood, for
a brief period the model nation of the world.
" Now lies she there, and none so poor to do her
reverence y
There are, for there must be, explanations of
all this that will leave us our confidence in
mankind undiminished In 1914. of her thir-
ty-four and half millions, seventeen millions
lin round numbers were unable to read or
write seven millions able to read, but not to
write seven millions read and wrote incor-
rectly; two and half millions read and wrote
correctly three-quarters of a million had the
elements of classical education; and three
hundred and fifteen thousand had complete
classical education These statistics of her
ignorance are scarcely match for those of her
crime; and the poverty of the masses is rs
deep and hopeless as naturally belong to her
barbarism and prohigacy. Her brag writer's
claim that she is the centre the focus, of the
civilization of Europe" and there are people
Lot hon nd brnI hn chn ha auln In
fact, she ever has been and still is the foe of
civilizaton--the worst existing enemy of hui
man progress herself, and tool of the most
Spain, malignant despotisms of the earth. italy,
the Netherlands, Holland have had their prog
ress to better conditions and happier fortunes
again and again arrested by her, and she has
been the perpetual enemy Of the free cities of
Germany. No country within her baleful
proximity has escaped its mischief She in
ilicted the ieudal system upon Europe ten GEN.
turtles ago, and is now the chief instrument in
the endeavor to restore the despotsm of the
darkest ages of religion and government over
the whole Continent Feudal or Free, Monar-
chical or Republican, it is all alike and her
prescription of the Huguenots the atrocities of
St Bartholomew, and the crime and misery of
her first revolution, are all of piece and
after sending fifty thousand troops as one of the
first public acts of the new Republic, to crush
the liberties of Rome we ought not to be sur
prsed at the coup detdt of December last, Or
the base quetude of the country under it, OF
course, we shall have the news of another mob,
some day soon, or of an assassination at least
and, may be, another form Of bastard repub-
lie but it will be more French than actual,
whatever shape the substantial lie may take.
| Guizot claims for France that ideas always
precedc and impel the progress of the social
order that doctrine goes before realization
and mind is always in the lead of movement
All OF which is very true, but in Il different
sense from that of the admiring author ideas,
mind, and doctrine, are always active but the
evil is, that things do not follow, facts do not
fulfil theories, and all the resulting movement
is hustle and fuss, without progression. the
rambling freedom of research, the incessant
activity of speculation of the French mind, in
dieates, in fact, how completely it has lost it :.
way III the matter of political and social phi.
losophy. They are in the wilderness, without
n pathway, and their running to and fro, in
every direction, only indicates their confusion.
Men are not perpctually inquring for road,
until they have lost it; and it is yaletudinarans,
not healthymen, who are most concerned about
their health, and busiest in search of remedies
A country most renowned for system. making
is one in which the few do the thinking and
the many disregard it. System.making may