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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



the form of government. Amid such disadvan- 

 tages, and in face of a reaction at once political, 

 social, and religious, the desperate reaction of 

 privilege, both social and ecclesiastical, fighting 

 for its existence, and not scrupling, in its trans- 

 ports of rage and terror at the appearance of 

 liberty and equality, to combine with Robespierre 

 in order to defeat Lafayette, success would have 

 been almost a miracJe. But then, to extinguish 

 the last hope, came the coalition of the kings, 

 hounded on by the too eloquent ravings of Burke, 

 whose total failure to understand the difficulties 

 under which the French reformers labored was 

 discreditable to him as a political philosopher, 

 while his frantic invocations of war, and, in his 

 own hideous phrase, of " a long war," were dis- 

 graceful to him not only as a political philosopher 

 but as a man. 



The Republican Constitution formed after the 

 overthrow of the Terrorists was not a good one. 

 The institution of two Chambers was a mistake, 

 arising from an illusion of which we shall pres- 

 ently have to speak ; a sufficient control over 

 the Executive Directory was not secured to the 

 representatives of the nation ; the judiciary was 

 not placed on a proper footing. Still it is prob- 

 able that the Constitution would in time have 

 worked and given to France law and order under 

 a Republic, had it been administered by tolerably 

 honest hands, and had it not been exposed to 

 military violence. But a revolution, especially 

 an abortive revolution, leaves behind it a fearful 

 legacy, not only of disappointment, lassitude, mis- 

 trust among the people, but of depravity among 

 the chiefs. It gives birth to a race of intriguers, 

 utterly selfish, utterly unprincipled, trained to 

 political infidelity iu the school of fortunate 

 apostasy, steeped in perfidy by the violation of 

 unnumbered oaths, and at the same time familiar 

 with the revolutionary use of violence. Such 

 was the offspring of the revolutionary periods of 

 ancient history both in Greece and Rome. Thu- 

 cydides saw and painted them; they impressed 

 their character on Roman politics after the civil 

 wars of Marius and Sylla. Such again was the 

 offspring of the English Revolution ; the Lauder- 

 dales and Shaftesburys, the scoundrels who formed 

 the governments and led the factions of the Res- 

 toration, who carried on religious persecutions 

 while themselves were infidels, shut up the ex- 

 chequer, made the treaty of Dover, got up the 

 Popish Plot, seized the municipal charters, judi- 

 cially murdered Russell and Sydney. But never 

 was there such a generation of these men as that 

 which emerged from the wreck of the dreams of 



Rousseau, and from the deadly struggle of fac- 

 tions which ended with the fall of Robespierre — 

 Tallien, Freron, Barere, Barras, Rewbell, Talley- 

 rand, Merlin, Fouche, and their crew. Political 

 corruption was aggravated by the corruption of 

 morals, caused by the outburst of sensualism 

 which naturally ensued after the dreadful repres- 

 sion and the savage Spartanism of the Terror. 

 To this general depravity was added the volcanic 

 fury, still unabated, of party passions raging in 

 the breasts of factions which but yesterday had 

 been alternately reveling in the blood of each 

 other. It was by military violence, however, that 

 the Constitution was at last overthrown, and its 

 fall was the beginning of that supremacy of the 

 army which unhappily has been from that hour, 

 and still is, the fundamental fact of French poli- 

 tics. The hand which, at the bidding of traitors 

 in the Directory, dealt the first blow, was that of 

 Augereau, but the hand which planned it and 

 dealt the final blow was that of Bonaparte. In 

 estimating the result of the first experiment in 

 Republican government, this must always be 

 borne in mind. 



The appearance of Bonaparte upon the scene 

 with his character and his abilities may be truly 

 called the most calamitous accident in history. 

 An accident it was, for Bonaparte was not a 

 Frenchman ; he was made a French soldier by 

 the chance which had annexed his country to 

 France, without which he would have been a 

 Corsican brigand, instead of being the scourge of 

 the world. Little did Choiseul think that the 

 rapacity which added to France Corsica would 

 be the cause a century afterward of her losing 

 Alsace-Lorraine. As to the greatness of the 

 calamity, few doubt it, except the train of mer- 

 cenary adventurers whose existence in France, 

 as a standing and most dangerous conspiracy 

 against her liberties, is itself the fatal proof of 

 the fact which they would deny. What may 

 have been the extent of Napoleon's genius, politi- 

 cal or military, is a question still under debate, 

 and one of a kind which it is difficult to settle, 

 because, to take the measure of a force, whether 

 mechanical or intellectual, we must know the 

 strength of the resistance overcome. The Revo- 

 lution had swept the ground clear for his ambi- 

 tion, and had left him in his career of aggrandize- 

 ment almost as free from the usual obstacles 

 without as he was from any restraints of con- 

 science or humanity within. Death removed the 

 only three men who were likely to make a stand, 

 Hoche, Marceau, and Kleber, from his path. He 

 disposed absolutely of an army full of burning 



