except those feelings which humanity would be the better
without. The French Revolution banished that breed of kings from
Christendom, if not from the world. He must be compared with monarchs
who have felt the responsibilities of their trust very differently from
the man who called himself the State, who thought that twenty millions
of people had been made to minister to his vanity, and who gently
reproached God with ingratitude because of the victories of Eugene
and Marlborough. "God, it appears, is forgetting us," he said,
"notwithstanding all that we have done for Him." A monarch of this class
is now as extinct as the mammoth, and traces of his footsteps excite the
wonder of the disciples of political science. In these days, a monarch
must rule mostly for the people, and largely by the people. He is only
the popular chief in a country which has not a well-defined constitution
over which time has thrown the mantle of reverence. The course of
Napoleon III. has been in accordance with this view of his position. He
is not the State, but he is the first man in the State. Under his lead
and direction the French have known much material prosperity, and have
added not a little to that wealth which, when judiciously used as a
means, and not worshipped as the end of human exertion, is the source of
so much happiness. The readiness with which the people, the masses
of his subjects, subscribed to the great war-loans, contending for
subscriptions as for valuable privileges, establishes both their
prosperity under his government, and their confidence in that
government's strength and permanence. That he has not made use of his
power to stifle the expression of thought is clear from the numerous
works that have been published, some of which were written for the
purpose of attacking his dynasty,--authors of eminence choosing to
pervert history by converting its volumes into huge partisan pamphlets,
in which the subject handled and the object aimed at are alike libelled.
He has kept the press, meaning the journals, more sharply reined up than
Englishmen and Americans have approved or can approve; but as French
journalists, instead of confining their political warfare to its proper
use, are in the habit, when free to publish what they please, of
assailing the very existence of the government itself, he has some
excuse for his conduct. An English journal which should recommend the
dethronement of Victoria would be as summarily silenced a