The Sun. — 1848-09-19 (London, England)

POST.—M. Thiers is rising in the National Assembly. He is made of buoyant stuff. The violence of the democratic storm cannot submerge him for ever. If we may apply to human what was said of divine subjects, Non confundetur et ceternum. We are glad to see M. Thiers thus vindicating the cause of sterling and tried ability against clap-trap talents; of long public practice against the temerity and empiricism of the new men; of knowledge and learning against flippancy, theory, and dogmatism; of statesmanship against visionary promises; of experience against experiments; of old fame against new notoriety; of order against anarchy; of society against barbarism. In the present state of the French, General Cavaignac is a fitter ruler for them, not only than M. Thiers, but than perhaps even the Emperor Nicholas himself would be, because the latter is so very far short of the despotic master they require. Van Amburgh is the proper " moderator" of the tigers, and the present military chief of the French is the man for the Parisians. His rod of iron is a good answer to their insensate clamours and their bloodthirsty struggles for liberty. But they are men at bottom, in spite of the more than Circean enchantments which have momentarily reduced them below the level of the wild beasts. And when " the wand" shall have "been reversed," and the nefarious charms shall have been backward muttered, we look to see a milder and larger-hearted rule prevail, in the midst of a less menaced and less precarious prosperity, upon the soil of France. M. Thiers will then perhaps resume his natural position among the statesmen of Europe, and the least of the great men of the monarchy show as a giant among the Republicans. When the Commons of England in King Charles's time wanted to substitute their corporate tyranny for the much exaggerated oppressions of their lineal born Sovereign—when they had locked up the doors of the House of Peers, all for liberty, and murdered the King, for liberty too, and declared themselves perpetual (thus re-establishing on the unauthorised and perfidious destruction of the people's franchise, to which they owed their own existence, the very thing which they had pretended it needful to abolish, that is, an independent, irresponsible House of Legislature)—when the Commons of England had thus trampled successively on the Lords, on the Monarch, and on the people, all for liberty, we say, and for the constitution, what did they gain? They gained a Cromwell instead of a Charles, and became the slaves of their servant, who were too proud to rest content with less than being masters of their Lords, Sovereigns of their King, andb tyrants of their country? And so now, after the Seine has been turned into blood, that Paris might be the paradise of unbounded freedom, equality, and fraternity, the Parisians have no freedom to move from the Faubourg St. Antoine to the Faubourg St. Germain, without as many forms as under the system which they found so oppressive would have carried them round .the globe ; they have no equality save that of helotry to one common superior ; no fraternity save that of courtsmartial, transportations, and executions. This is the moral, the eternal moral of revolutions, in whatever epoch, or under whatever sun, their disastrous and insensate course may roll—that mob violence and anarchic uproar lead only to temporary license of an intolerable kind, to be quickly followed by oppressions ten thousand times more severe and grinding than those for which (a short time previously) men were ready to wade through oceans of carnage and horror. Nations, being composed of men, must be subject to the laws physical and moral which govern men. Contentment, moderation, diligence in the pursuits of peace, frugality in their use—these are the only roads to national prosperity, as they are the sole by-paths to individual felicity. Let the friends of order take heart. Society will for ever be too strong for its enemies, however loud at times the roar of turbulence may swell upon the ear. The rule must in the end prevail over the exception. The future will be like the past. National Jack Sheppards and national Gawtreys will meet the fate of their individual prototypes. In past ages there have been revolutions. But the inevitable step of order more or less severe has marched over their necks. Governments have died, as men have died. But they have also lived; and as life is longer than:death, as the calm is more frequent and more constant than the storm, so are power and law longer, more frequent and more constant than anarchy and rebellion,