gs" than this dignified notification
to mankind that in consenting to serve one's country one does not
relinquish the right to decent treatment--to immunity from factious
opposition and abuse--to at least as much civil consideration as is due
from the Church to the Devil.

M. Casimir-Perier did not seek the Presidency of the French Republic;
it was thrust upon him against his protestations by an apparently almost
unanimous mandate of the French people in an emergency which it was
thought that he was the best man to meet. That he met it with modesty
and courage was testified without dissent. That he afterward did
anything to forfeit the confidence and respect that he then inspired is
not true, and nobody believes it true. Yet in his letter of resignation
he said, and said truly:

"For the last six months a campaign of slander and insult has been going
on against the army, magistrates. Parliament and hierarchical Chief of
State, and this license to disseminate social hatred continues to be
called 'the liberty of thought.'"

And with a dignity to which it seems strange that any one could be
insensible, he added:

"The respect and ambition which I entertain for my country will not
allow me to acknowledge that the servants of the country, and he who
represents it in the presence of foreign nations, may be insulted every
day."

These are noble words. Have we any warrant for demanding or expecting
that men of clean life and character will devote themselves to the good
of ingrates who pay, and ingrates who permit them to pay, in flung mud?
It is hardly credible that among even those persons most infatuated
by contemplation of their own merit as pointed out by their thrifty
sycophants "the liberty of thought" has been carried to that extreme.
The right of the State to demand the sacrifice of the citizen's life is
a doctrine as old as the patriotism that concedes it, but the right to
require him to forego his good name--that is something new under the
sun. From nothing but the dunghill of modern democracy could so noxious
a plant have sprung.

"Perhaps in laying down my functions," said M. Casimir-Perier, "I shall
have marked out a path of duty to those who are solicitous for the
dignity, power and good name of France in the world."

We may be permitted to hope that the lesson is wider than France and
more lasting than the French Republic. It is time that not only France
but all other countries with "popular institutions