Year: 1871

MIR. J0hn BlSelOW mas recently puDllsned an
exceedingly clever and timely study of the
problem now presented to the cOnsidera-
ton of the French people, called France
and Hereditary Monarchy. We find its
opening chapter characterized by undue ten
derness to the Commune, and by what
seems to us unjust asperity toward Mr.. Thiers
and his Government; but this position, as it
is founded upon conviction of Mr. Thiers'
mOnarchcal leanings, which we see no sufii-
cient reason to share, does not vitiate the
conclusions at which Mr.. Bigelow arrives in
the subsequent portion of his pamphlet, ac-
cOrding to which the support and definite
establishment of the Republic are the only
means for securing to France a strong and
permanent government, in harmony with the
demands of the age


At time when more than one great nation
of Europe is seriously considering the ques-
ton whether it shall yield to or resist the
rising tide of democracy, it is important that
we shall have all the light which history and
science have thrown upon this secular discus
sion. The argument hourly made against
the Republic, which seems approaching with a
slow and certain step in every country of the
south of Europe, is that Republican institu-
tions offer no sure guarantee of permanence
This is unfortunately true, but of no more
weight against the republic than against any
other form of government In fact, the argu-
ment from analogy is clearly against the mon
archy in this respect, for the United States
Constitution is to-day the oldest in the world,
in the form in which it exists. 1t was adopted
in 1887, aud since that time nearly every civ
ilized nation has radically modified its own
fundamental law. France under its diff
ferent masters has enjoyed fifteen constitutions,
which may account for its showing no indecent
haste to indulge in another. 1t was upon the
point of going through still another most i'm
portant modification of its organic law, when
the war came and abolished the Empire and
all its experiments No monarchy In Europe
has subsisted during this period without change.
Dozens of the smaller States have passed out
Of existence or been absorbed in the great
agglomerations. Prussia has become an En-
pire. Austria has forsaken its doctrines and
practice of Capitalization which made it so
long the bulwark of absOlutism and has de-
veloped into a Federal State, on the way to
still greater transformations. Even III England,
that ideal of the constitutional monarchy,
which has seemed for ages to stand before
the continent as the symbol of immutability
the tide of democracy is making such inroads
on the old traditions of government, that any
violent revolution will soon be rendered un-
necessary for the entire reconstruction OF her
political system.


II will take still many years of rude expe-
rence Ia teach the believers in monarchy how
brittle is the clay image they arc worsmping'
But this is the work which our Republic Is
doing every day it exists. Every year OF
peace and prosperity through which we pass
strengthens enormously the hands OF reason
able Republicans in Europe. The successful
resistance we opposed for four years to a
rebellion of nearly half our country, enabled
them to contend that there was more force IN
an armed Republic than in any monarchy
The readiness with which we dismissed our
forces and entered on our normal life showed
tho world that a Republican force was tho