liberty?
The workmen, as we have seen, are vicious enough, yet they are the most
sociable and gentlest creatures in the universe. Nothing moves them to
violence; if you starve them, they will wait; if you kill them, they are
resigned; they are the least fortunate, but the most charitable; they
know not what hatred is; the more you persecute, the more they love you.
If in our haste we called these men degraded, we recall our words, for
M. Michelet says that they stand amongst the highest "in the estimation
of God." We told you just now, always upon the authority of our author,
what rascals the French manufacturers were; and how the unfeeling
masters of to-day are paying the penalty of their fathers' frauds and
evil practices. We hinted, too, at the symptoms of decay already visible
in their condition. But we did not tell you that France manufactures, in
a spirit of self-denial that cannot be too strongly commended, for the
whole world, who come to her, "buy her patterns, which they go and copy,
ill or well, at home. Many an Englishman has declared, in an inquiry,
that he has a house in Paris _to have patterns_. A few pieces purchased
at Paris, Lyons, or in Alsatia, and afterwards copied abroad, are
sufficient for the English and German counterfeiter to inundate the
world. It is like the book-trade. France writes and Belgium sells." It
was stated that the official is cruelly paid for his labour, and M.
Michelet further hints, that peculation is but too often the grievous
consequence. In England this would be fatal to a man's self-respect, and
subject him to _bondage_ in more ways than one. But, across the Channel,
Providence miraculously interposes, and even rescues the official in the
hour of difficulty, for the honour and glory of _la belle France_. "Yes,
at the moment of fainting, the culprit stops short without knowing
why----because he feels upon his face the invisible spirit of the heroes
of our wars, _the breath of the old flag_!!"

It is really very difficult to go on satisfactorily with such a writer
as this. If there be truth in the picture which he draws of his
country's misery, there must be falsehood in the language with which he
paints her pre-eminence, and battles for her unapproachable perfection.
If she be perfect, the vital sores that have been presented to us exist
not in her, but only in the imagination of the enthusiastic and deluded
writer. Upon one page it is written that the situation of France is s