stances, and helped not a little to promote his purpose;
but they could not alone have made him Emperor of the French, and the
world's arbiter. There must have been extraordinary talent in the man
who aspired as he did, or he would have failed as completely in 1848 as
he had failed in 1836 and in 1840. But the real power of the man came
out as soon as he found a standing-place. Previously to 1848, he could
act only as a criminal in seeking his proper place, as he believed it to
be. He had first to conquer before he could attempt to govern,--and to
conquer, too, with the means of his enemy. All this was changed in 1848.
Then he was safe in France, as he had been in England, and began
the political race on equal terms with such men as Cavaignac and
Ledru-Rollin. That he soon passed far ahead of them was, perhaps, as
much due to circumstances as to his political abilities. The name of
Bonaparte was associated with the idea of the restoration of order
and prosperity, and this helped him with that large class of persons,
embracing both rich men and poor men, who not only believe that "order
is Heaven's first law," but that under certain conditions it is the
supreme law, for the maintenance of which all other laws are to be set
aside and disregarded. These men, whose organ and exponent was M.
Cesar Romieu, who called so loudly for cannon to put down the
revolutionists,--"even if it should come from Russia!"--and whose type
of perfection is the churchyard, were all fanatical supporters of "the
coming man," and they assisted him along the course with all their might
and strength. No matter how swiftly he drove, his chariot-wheels seemed
to them to tarry. The very arguments that were made use of to induce
other men to act against the rising Bonaparte were those which had
the most effect in binding them to his cause. He would establish a
cannonarchy, would he? Well, a cannonarchy was exactly what they
desired, provided its powers should be directed, not against foreign
monarchs, but against domestic Republicans. That a government of which
he should be the head would disregard the constitution, would shackle
the press, would limit speech, and would suppress the Assembly, was an
argument in his favor, that, to their minds, was irresistible. Had
they thought of the Russian War, and of the Italian War, and of the
extinction of the Pope's temporal power, and of the liberal home-policy
that was adopted in 1860, as things possible to occu