, was to drive the king, without redemption, to treason
or the scaffold. An absolute party is the only safe party in great
crises. The tact consists in knowing when to have recourse to extreme
measures at the critical minute. We say it unhesitatingly--history will
hereafter say as we do. Then came a moment when the Constituent Assembly
had the right to choose between the monarchy and the republic, and when
she had to choose the republic. There was the safety of the Revolution
and its legitimacy. In wanting resolution it failed in prudence.

VIII.

But, they say with Barnave, France is monarchical by its geography as by
its character, and the contest arises in minds directly between the
monarchy and the republic. Let us make ourselves understood:--

Geography is of no party; Rome and Carthage had no frontiers; Genoa and
Venice had no territories. It is not the soil which determines the
nature of the constitutions of people, it is time. The geographical
objection of Barnave fell to the ground a year afterwards, before the
prodigies in France in 1792. It proved that if a republic fails in unity
and centralisation, it is unable to defend a continental nationality.
Waves and mountains are the frontiers of the weak--men are the frontiers
of a people. Let us then have done with geography. It is not
geometricians but statesmen who form social constitutions.

Nations have two great interests which reveal to them the form they
should take, according to the hour of the national life which they have
attained--the instinct of their conservation, and the instinct of their
growth. To act, or be idle, to walk, or sit down, are two acts wholly
different, which compel men to assume attitudes wholly diverse. It is
the same with nations. The monarchy or the republic correspond exactly
amongst a people to the necessities of these two opposite conditions of
society--repose or action. We here understand two words; these two
words, repose and action, in their most absolute acceptation; for there
is repose in republics, as there is action in monarchies.

Is it a question of preservation, of reproduction, of development in
that kind of slow and insensible growth which people have like vast
vegetables? Is it a question of keeping in harmony with the European
balance of preserving its laws and manners; of maintaining its
traditions, perpetuating opinions and worship, of guaranteeing
properties and right conduct, of preventing troubles, agita