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ART. V. 1. La France Nouvelle. Par M. PRÉVOST-PARADOL, de l'Académie Française. Paris, 1868.

2. La Politique Radicale. Par JULES SIMON. Paris, 1868. 3. Tableau de la Situation des Établissements Français dans l'Algérie; Gouvernement Général de l'Algérie, 1864, and 1865-1866.

4. Compte Rendu au nom du Conseil d'Administration de la Société Générale Algérienne. Par M. L. FREMY, Conseiller d'État en Service Extraordinaire Président. Exercice, 1867. Paris, 1868.

IN 1861 M. Guizot defined "the terrible problem of our time" to be "What is the new political edifice which corresponds to the new society which has grown up, and how to construct it so that it shall endure?" Last June M. Rouher exclaimed in the Corps Législatif, "The work of the Empire may be summed up in two words-the preservation of order first, and then the separation of the liberal from the revolutionary flag." In these and similar utterances, and still more in their accordance with what appeared to us to be the prevailing tone of thought and feeling in France, we had already begun to fancy that we recognised the silver lining of those clouds of error, hesitation, and abject irresolution which have so long darkened the political horizon of that great country, when the two remarkable books which we have placed at the head of this article fell into our hands. Their authors, unhappily, do not share our hopes. They are profoundly dissatisfied with the present, and distrustful of the future; and yet we conceive it to be the highest compliment we can pay them, not as individuals only but as exponents of the opposition, when we assure them that the effect of what they have written has been to strengthen these hopes in our minds. The appearance of a work so lofty in tone, so thoughtful, resolute, and temperate, as that of M. Prévost-Paradol more especially, is the best of all proof that the higher aspirations of France have not been extinguished during the sixteen years of tranquillity which the lassitude of the nation and the iron rule of the Empire have produced, and that, if her political progress has been less apparent, it has been scarcely less real than her material improvement. In these years of silence the dearbought lessons of the previous sixty have been deeply, and we believe widely, pondered. Those who heedlessly rushed into action before, have demanded of themselves the reason of the political faiths for which they fought; they have sought to determine the amount of truth embodied in the symbols for which

their fathers shed each others' blood, and the result has been the commencement at least, in many directions, of that winnowing of truth from falsehood, which is the first condition of all real advancement. The system of government under which Frenchmen have lived during this long period has been confessedly a transitionary one. No man believed, and no honest and disinterested man professed to believe, that a military despotism could be permanently established in the nineteenth century, in what, without instituting invidious comparisons, we must all recognise as one of the foremost States of Western Europe. Under no conceivable adaptation could the Empire itself be accepted as the solution of the "terrible problem." But the whole nation accepted it notwithstanding, if not patiently at least peaceably, and many accepted it gratefully, not only as a locus penitentiæ for past errors, but as a great and glorious opportunity which God had afforded them for distinguishing between possible and impossible aspirations, and determining at least the necessary conditions of permanence in the future edifice.

Never was the boast which identifies the State with the person of the Sovereign truer in the case of anointed monarch, than of the present ruler of France. The Empire is not an institution but a man; and so long as the man exists, in vigour and efficiency, the work of constructing the institution must be suspended; for that the man himself should accomplish a work which must consist in merging his personality in a permanent, and, as such, necessarily impersonal form of government, is scarcely a conceivable event. Nothing can be more natural than the impatience which the liberal party in France exhibit for the termination of this period of inaction; and we deeply sympathize with the discouragement which the present indifference of the nation to every higher interest than mere physical well-being occasions them. To the young, the vigorous, and the high-hearted, the duty of waiting is the hardest of all. But there are circumstances in which it is also the noblest, and the present position of Frenchmen we conceive to be emphatically one of those in which "they also serve who only stand and wait."

Till this period of hibernation elapses it is vain to conjecture what shall be the special characteristics of the future government of France; and in the comparative indifference to forms and names which the highest class of political writers profess, we see an indication of that temperance of view which is the best guarantee for the spirit of compromise which must inevitably guide any final arrangement. Nothing can be wiser than the following passage:

"There will be found in these studies that declared and determined

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indifference to questions of persons, of dynasties, and of external forms of government, which has cost me so many attacks, and even a judicial condemnation; but which I hope will always be my principal title to the approbation of wise men and good citizens. Not that I have not, like the rest of the world, my private inclinations and personal preferences; but I insist upon regarding them as secondary questions when placed alongside of the primary question of the political and administrative reformation of France. Notwithstanding those abrupt or insensible modifications which time always operates on us, I believe that, on this point at least, I am proof against all change; and I cannot imagine that I should ever become capable either of hatred or enthusiasm for such words as monarchy or republic; or that any form of government, whatever be its form or its name, should ever succeed in changing me, by the mere fact of its existence, either into a factious adversary or a servile partisan. These questions of names and persons, which for too many Frenchmen sum up all that they understand by the term politics, are dominated, in my eyes, by a question vastly more important, that, namely, of whether or not we shall ever be a free nation."

But though it belongs to a future into which we need not seek to penetrate, to determine what shall be the external form of the ultimate government of France, its principles, its objects, and even its essential characteristics are already traced by the results of experiments which have been repeated only too often. Whether it be monarchical or republican, whether its genesis be the spontaneous effort of the genius of the people, or, as is more probable, be presided over by an ancient dynasty of kings, enlightened by experience and chastened by exile,-if it is to be a free government of any kind, we know, and Frenchmen of all classes appear at length to have learnt, that it must be one which neither sacrifices liberty to order nor order to liberty. That the permanent realization of either of these great objects of political life apart from the other is impossible,— nay further, that the more perfect the realization of the one the more perfect will be the realization of the other also, that they stand and fall, rise and sink together,—are ascertained truths of political science, of universal application, which for the present appear to be almost more familiar to the mind of France than to the mind of England. The firm hold which the national mind has at length been enabled to take of these cardinal maxims, not as theoretical doctrines, but as practical rules of action, we regard as so great a gain, that setting all minor grounds of present discouragement at defiance, we feel warranted in stretching out a hand of congratulation to our friends and neighbours, and meeting every token of discouragement with a sursum corda!

Nor have the publicists, or even the public of France, failed

to deduce inferences from this political commonplace, which still further indicate the justness of their appreciation of the necessary character of the structure which it belongs to the next generation to rear :

"The classes hitherto dominant," says M. Guizot, "no longer contest the general rights of humanity, and show themselves everywhere disposed or resigned to accept the system of open competition to merit of every form. The middle classes have learnt to distrust social Utopias, and to recognise the conditions of public order which are indispensable to the good order of families and the prosperity of labour."

The accuracy of the first branch of M. Guizot's assertion will not be called in question, either in France, or as he extends it, in Europe generally. The principles of Free-trade have extended themselves from the Forum to the Senate, and from the Senate to the Salon. In so far as the aspirations of democracy are confined to the vindication of competition without fear or favour, their realization has been complete, and we trust final, in every department of life. It is in this triumph that we behold the true harvest of the French Revolution. Would that we could feel equally confident as regards the second ground of hope to which M. Guizot refers-that we could feel satisfied that the futility of the search after the central Utopia of all,-after equality, not in the sense of equality before the law, but of equality of social conditions and political rights and responsibilities, had been seized with the same clearness with which men have acknowledged the injustice and impolicy of erecting insuperable barriers between class and class. The distinction between liberty and levelling, between freedom to rise and license to pull down, plain though it seems at first sight, is one which, in the last analysis, even the scientific mind seizes with difficulty, and of which the popular mind continually loses sight. There is reason to apprehend that the instinct which has hitherto guided the English nation unconsciously to its reception, or at least to its application, has been somewhat enfeebled. Still, notwithstanding all that has happened to us of late, we ourselves are not prepared, and very few Englishmen, we presume, are prepared to give in their adhesion to the opposite doctrine, even as stated by so moderate a democrat as M. Prévost-Paradol; to concur with him in the opinion. that our colonies, in so far as they have acted on it, have made une prodigieuse avance sur la mère patrie; or to join with him in looking confidently and hopefully forward to the time when the aristocracy of England shall be " vanquished and destroyed." In an eloquent passage in which he sketches the aristocracies of

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Rome, of France, and of England, with that clear and vigorous outline which gives such charm to his pictures, he pays to that of England the compliment of saying that it has had la justice et l'adresse d'appeler dans son sein tout ce qui s'élève et brille à côté d'elle. Now, an aristocracy of which this can be said even by so generous a critic, is an aristocracy the existence of which is, to our thinking, entirely consistent with the highest conceivable development of liberty, and we confess we can see no substantial object contended for by M. Prévost-Paradol, or by any individual or party that stops short of socialism, that is inconsistent with its permanence. Nay, we go farther than this. We assert, and if we could succeed in making ourselves understood, we should assert, without fear of contradiction, that the existence of such an aristocracy, and of the amount of inequality which it implies, are not merely reconcilable with, but are involved in the idea of liberty, both social and political, and that to interdiet to individuals the right of acquiring any one of its characteristics, or to prohibit their sanction either by society or by the State, would be to infringe upon liberty both private and public. For what are the characteristics of such an aristocracy? Let us try whether we cannot seize hold of this spectre which still so scares our neighbours, and demand of it whether its ultimate intents be indeed " wicked or charitable." M. Prévost-Paradol has an evident tenderness for it himself; and it has hitherto wandered amongst our alleys and hunted over our stubbles so harmlessly, he would be the last man to object that for old friendship's sake we should have a last word with it, before we commit it pathetically to the force of that democratic current, the action of which, he tells us, "will be so regular and gentle as to be almost insensible."

And first, let us put aside four accidental characteristics which have been associated with it so frequently as in the eyes of many to constitute its essence :

1st. Hereditary legislation has no more to do with the existence of an aristocracy than hereditary jurisdiction has to do with the existence of a magistracy. The propriety of its preservation, even in States where it has long existed, is a question of political expediency which now greatly divides opinion, and we agree with M. Paradol in regarding its introduction or revival as impossible.

2d. Privilege, in any sense in which the interests of others could be prejudiced by it, never formed any part of aristocracy in England. With us the noble never enjoyed either favour from the judge or exemption from the tax-gatherer.

3d. Neither has exclusiveness ever belonged to it. Every office in England, and every rank and dignity which England

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