THE NINETY YEARS' AGONY OF FRANCE. 



199 



gles of oppressed nationalities caused an insur- 

 rection in France against the surviving forms of 

 monarchy and the influences by which they were 

 upheld. Chauvinism and the fear of anarchy to- 

 gether gave birth to the second Empire, under 

 which the sovereign power reverted from the rep- 

 resentatives of the nation to the monarch, who 

 was in all but form a despot, as before the Legis- 

 lature had been, m all but form and saving il- 

 licit influence, the king. The second Empire 

 went to the grave of the first by the same road, 

 the military aggressiveness which was the condi- 

 tion of its existence leading it on at last to ruin- 

 ous defeat. Now, again, comes a nominal repub- 

 lic ; but, unfortunately, there is still a king, and 

 the hopeless problem of carrying on government 

 with a divided sovereignty presents itself afresh. 

 The marshal, having the command of the army, 

 and being supported by those who desire a re- 

 turn to monarchy, struggles for the sovereign 

 power ; and the question at the late election was, 

 whether that power should belong to him and 

 the ministers of his personal choice, or to the 

 nation. From 1798 onward there has been a 

 chronic though intermittent struggle for the sov- 

 ereign power several times; that power has been 

 transferred and retransferred ; there have been 

 periods in which it was doubtful where it re- 

 sided ; but it has never been divided, nor is a di- 

 vision possible in the nature of things. The at- 

 tempt can only lead to a conflict which will prob- 

 ably end, as it did in England, in civil war. 



Those who found an elective government 

 must not fancy that they can at the same time 

 preserve monarchy. They must be logical, be- 

 cause they will find that in this case not to be 

 logical is to plunge into practical confusion. They 

 must vest the sovereignty absolutely and beyond 

 question in the nation. Their first care must be 

 to establish on an immovable foundation the 

 principles that the nation alone makes and alone 

 can alter the constitution ; that to the nation 

 alone all allegiance is due, and against it alone 

 can treason be committed ; that all other author- 

 ity, however high, is merely derivative, responsi- 

 ble, and bounded by the written law ; that the 

 sovereignty of the nation is exercised through its 

 representatives duly elected; and that to these 

 representatives the obedience of all executive 

 officers must be paid. This done, they may af- 

 ford to make any conservative regulations with 

 regard to the election of the National Assembly 

 and the mode of its proceeding that they please ; 

 and, where freedom is young, they will find care- 

 ful regulations of this kind needful. It is the 



game of the Bonapartists, first to assert the sov- 

 ereignty of the nation, and then to make the na- 

 tion permanently divest itself of its sovereignty 

 by a plebiscite in favor of the Bonaparte family 

 and the brood of adventurers whose instruments 

 the Bonapartes are. Of course, no legislation 

 can prevent a national suicide ; but clear declara- 

 tions of principle are not barren because they 

 are not endowed with force to defend themselves 

 against treachery or violence ; and it would be 

 important to declare that the national sovereignty 

 is inherent as well as entire, and that no single 

 generation can by its act divest future genera- 

 tions of their right. 



So long as there is a single head to the state 

 there will always be some danger of a revival of 

 monarchical pretensions, and of a dispute as to 

 the seat of the sovereign power — at least in any 

 country where monarchy has long existed and 

 monarchical ideas have taken root. America is 

 republican soil, on which hardly any but demo- 

 cratic ideas can grow ; the sovereignty of the na- 

 tion is firmly established, not only in documents, 

 but in the minds of the people ; the President is 

 elected for a short term, his powers are clearly 

 bounded by the written law, he has hardly any 

 military force at his command ; yet Jackson 

 showed a tendency to encroachment, and the 

 jobbers who plundered the community under 

 Grant betrayed their desire not only of increas- 

 ing but of perpetuating his power. A single 

 head of the state is a fancied necessity; the 

 Swiss Constitution, which, instead of a single 

 man, has a council with a president whose func- 

 tion is only to preside, presents great advantages 

 m this respect, and is the safest model for adop- 

 tion. It, moreover, gets rid of that which is the 

 scourge even of America, but far more of any 

 country where the questions that divide parties 

 are so fundamental and party hostility is so dead- 

 ly as in France — a presidential election, which 

 periodically stirs up from their depths all the 

 most violent passions, excites the most turbulent 

 ambitions, and brings all questions to a danger- 

 ous head. The framers of the American Consti- 

 tution were in some degree misled, like the fram- 

 ers of the French Constitution, by their British 

 model, which they reproduced in a republican 

 form; they imagined that it was necessary to 

 have something in place of the king, and the 

 elective presidency with all its evils is the re- 

 sult. 



Another signal and calamitous instance of 



mistaken imitation of the British Constitution 



! is the power of dissolution, which the other 



