for its own rights and liberties, purchased
so dearly and guarded so zealously; and when these were gradually
attacked by a man who felt himself to be delegated from God with
unlimited powers to rule, not according to laws but according to his
caprices and royal will, then the ferment began,--first in the
legislative assemblies, then extending to journalists, who controlled
public opinion, and finally to the discontented, enraged, and
disappointed people. The throne was undermined, and there was no power
in France to prevent the inevitable catastrophe. In Russia, Prussia, and
Austria an overwhelming army, bound together by the mechanism which
absolutism for centuries had perfected, could repress disorder; but in a
country where the army was comparatively small, enlightened by the ideas
of the Revolution and fraternizing with the people, this was not
possible. A Napoleon, with devoted and disciplined troops, might have
crushed his foes and reigned supreme; but a weak and foolish monarch,
with a disaffected and scattered army, with ministers who provoked all
the hatreds and violent passions of legislators, editors, and people
alike, was powerless to resist or overcome.

The short reign of Charles X. was not marked by a single event of
historical importance, except the conquest of Algiers; and that was
undertaken by the government to gain military _eclat_,--in other words,
popularity,--and this at the very time it was imposing restrictions on
the Press. There were during this reign no reforms, no public
improvements, no measures of relief for the poor, no stimulus to new
industries, no public encouragement of art or literature, no triumphs of
architectural skill; nothing to record but the strife of political
parties, and a systematic encroachment by the government on electoral
rights, on legislative freedom, on the liberty of the Press. There was a
senseless return to mediaeval superstitions and cruelties, all to please
the most narrow and intolerant class of men who ever traded on the
exploded traditions of the past. The Jesuits returned to promulgate
their sophistries and to impose their despotic yoke; the halls of
justice were presided over by the tools of arbitrary power; great
offices were given to the most obsequious slaves of royalty, without
regard to abilities or fitness. There was not indeed the tyranny of
Spain or Naples or Austria; but everything indicated a movement toward
it. Those six years which comprised