lippe strive to immerse all France in the culte des intérêts matériels, in the worship of the cash-box and of the ledger. It is not, or it has not hitherto been, in the character of Frenchmen to be content with being thus governed. Some idea of grandeur, at least some feeling of national self-importance, must be associated with that which they will voluntarily follow and obey. The one inducement by which Louis Philippe's government recommended itself to the middle classes was, that revolutions and riots are bad for trade. They are so ; but that is a very small part of the considerations which ought to determine our estimation of them. classes were thus appealed to through their class-interests, every individual, who, either from station, reputation, or talent, appeared worth gaining, was addressed through whatever personal interest, either of money or vanity, he was thought most likely to be accessible to. Many were attempted unsuccessfully, many successfully. Corruption was carried to the utmost pitch that the resources at the disposal of the government admitted of.

While

Accordingly, the best spirits in France had long felt, and felt each year more and more, that the government of Louis Philippe was a demoralizing government; that, under its baneful influence, all public principle or public spirit, or regard for political opinions, was giving way more and more to selfish indifference in the propertied classes generally, and, in many of the more conspicuous individuals, to the shameless pursuit of personal gain.

It is almost superfluous to adduce testimonies to facts of such universal notoriety; but it is worth while to refer to two documents, which demonstrate, after all

that has been said of the unexpectedness of the events of February, how clearly it was seen, by competent judges, that, from the principles on which the government had long been carried on, such a termination of its career was almost certain to happen at some time, and might happen at any time.

One of these documents is a speech of M. de Tocqueville, delivered in the Chamber of Deputies on the 27th of January, 1848,- exactly four weeks before the Revolution. In this remarkable and almost prophetic discourse, M. de Tocqueville said, that, in the class which possessed and exercised political rights, "political morality is declining; it is already deeply tainted; it becomes more deeply so from day to day. More and more, opinions, sentiments, and ideas of a public character are supplanted by personal interests, personal aims, points of view borrowed from private interest and private life." He called the members of the hostile majority themselves to witness, whether, in the five, ten, or fifteen years last elapsed, the number of those who voted for them from private motives was not perpetually increasing; the number who did so from political opinion, constantly diminishing.

"Let them tell me, if around them, under their eyes, there is not gradually establishing itself in public opinion a singular species of tolerance for the facts I have been speaking of; if, by little and little, there is not forming itself a vulgar and low morality, according to which the man who possesses political rights owes it to himself, owes it to his children, to his wife, to his relations, to make a personal use of those rights for their benefit; if this is not gradually raising itself into a sort of duty of the father of a family; if this new mo

rality, unknown in the great times of our history, unknown at the commencement of our Revolution, is not developing itself more and more, and making daily progress in the public mind."

He described the acts by which the government of Louis Philippe had made itself accessory to this decline of public spirit. In the first place, by the gigantic strides which it was making towards despotism,—

"The government has repossessed itself, especially in these last years, of greater powers, a larger measure of influence, prerogatives more manifold and more considerable, than it had possessed at any other epoch. It has become infinitely more powerful than could have been imagined, not only by those who 'conferred, but by those who accepted, the reins of government in 1830."

The mischief was aggravated by the indirect and crafty manner in which it was brought about.

"It was by reclaiming old powers, which were thought to have been abolished in 1830; by reviving old rights, which were supposed to have been annulled; by bringing again into activity old laws which were believed to have been abrogated, and applying new ones in a different meaning from that in which they had been enacted.... Do you suppose that this crooked and surreptitious manner of gradually regaining ascendency, as it were by surprise, through other means than those granted by the constitution, think you that this strange spectacle of address and savoir-faire, publicly exhibited for several years on so vast a theatre, to a whole nation looking on,- that this spectacle was of a nature to improve public morals?"

And supposing, by a great concession, that the men who wrought this evil were themselves persuaded that it was good,

"They have not the less effected it by means which morality disavows. They have achieved it by taking men, not by their honorable side, but by their bad side, by their passions, their weaknesses, their personal interests, often their vices.... And, to accomplish these things, it has been necessary for them to call to their assistance, to honor with their favor, to introduce into their daily intercourse, men who wished neither for honest ends nor honest means; who desired but the gross satisfaction of their private interests, by the aid of the power confided to them."

After citing one scandalous instance of a high office of trust conferred on a person notoriously corrupt, M. de Tocqueville added, "I do not regard this fact as a solitary one: I consider it the symptom of a general evil, the most salient trait of an entire course of policy. In the paths which you have chosen for yourselves, you had need of such men."

As a consequence of these things, he appealed to the whole body of his hearers whether it was not true that

"The sentiment, the instinct of instability,-that sentiment, the precursor of revolutions, which often presages them, and sometimes causes them to take place,- already exists to a most serious degree in the country. . . . Is there not a breeze of revolution in the air? This breeze, no one knows where it rises, whence it comes, nor (believe me) whom it sweeps away. ... It is my deep and deliberate conviction, that public morals are degenerating, and that the degeneracy of public morals will lead you in a short, perhaps a very short time, to new revolutions.... Have you at this very hour the certainty of a to-morrow? Do you know what may happen in France in You do not; but this you know, that the tempest is in the horizon; that

a year, in a month, perhaps even in a day?

it is marching towards you: will you suffer yourselves to be overtaken by it?

"Several changes in legislation have been talked of. I am much inclined to believe that such changes are not only useful, but necessary. I believe in the utility of electoral reform, in the urgency of excluding placemen from parliament. But I am not so senseless as to be unaware, that it is not the laws in themselves which make the destiny of peoples; no, it is not the mechanism of the laws which produces the great events of the world: it is the spirit of the government. Keep your laws if you will, though I think it a great error; keep them, -keep even the men, if you like; I for my part will be no obstacle: but, in Heaven's name, change the spirit of the government; for, I say it again, that spirit is hurrying you to the abyss."

The other document which shall be cited in proof that the natural consequences of Louis Philippe's system of government were foreseen by near observers is the evidence of M. Goudchaux, banker at Paris, and for some months Minister of Finance to the Republic; delivered before the Commission d'Enquête on the events of May and June last. M. Goudchaux, who said in his place in the Assembly that the Revolution had come too soon, nevertheless delared in his evidence, that he and some of his political friends felt so convinced that it was impending, that, a few days before it broke out, they held a meeting at his house to arrange a list of names for a Provisional Government, but disagreed on the question whether to admit or to exclude from the number M. Louis Blanc.

The Revolution, therefore, which appears to Lord Brougham in the singular character of an event without a cause, was so much the natural result of known causes