THE NINETY YEARS' AGONY OF FRANCE. 



203 



to this eminent writer, there must always be in 

 the nation, one toward authority, the other toward 

 liberty ; and these tendencies are the foundations 

 of the two parties, by the perpetual conflict of 

 which government i3 to be carried on. But, sup- 

 pose a man to have an equal and well-balanced 

 regard both for authority and for liberty, to 

 which party is he to belong ? Or is he to remain 

 in a state of suspension, and to be eliminated 

 from politics, because he thinks rightly and is 

 free from undue bias ? Suppose the nation itself 

 to have arrived at a reasonable frame of mind, to 

 be practically convinced that, while the preserva- 

 tion of ordered liberty is the object for which 

 authority exists, rational allegiance to authority 

 was essential to the preservation of liberty — what 

 then ? Because the nation was all of one opinion, 

 and that opinion evidently the right one, would 

 the possibility of good government be at an end ? 

 Then, again, do not those who hold the view of 

 M. Duvergier de Hauranne perceive that, while it 

 is essential to their theory that there should be 

 only two parties, that of authority and that of 

 liberty, that of the Government and that of the 

 Opposition, the fact is that in France there are a 

 dozen, that the same is the case in other coun- 

 tries, and that even in England, though the Con- 

 servative party, which is a party of interest, re- 

 tains its unity, the Liberal party, which is a party 

 of opinion, is splitting into sections, which are 

 becoming every day less amenable to party dis- 

 cipline, and therefore weaker as a whole ? It is 

 evident that, as intellectual activity and inde- 

 pendence of mind increase, sectional differences 

 of opinion will multiply, and party organization 

 will become more impracticable every day. Noth- 

 ing will be left us but hollow, treacherous, and 

 ephemeral combinations of cliques which have no 

 real principle of union, and which will be torn 

 asunder again by mutual jealousies almost as 

 soon as they are combined. Intrigue and cabal 

 will continually gain force ; the hope of a stable 

 government will grow more faint; until at last 

 the people, in sheer weariness and despair, will 

 fling themselves at the feet of any one who 

 promises to give them stability and security with 

 the strong hand. 



An executive council, regularly elected by the 

 legislature, in which the supreme power resides, 

 and renewed by a proper rotation and at proper 

 intervals, so as to preserve the harmony between 

 the legislature and the executive, without a min- 

 isterial crisis or a vote of censure, is the natural 

 and obvious crown of an elective polity ; and to 

 something of this sort, we venture to think, all 



free communities will be ultimately compelled to 

 have recourse, by the manifest failure of the par- 

 ty system. If further security for the responsi- 

 bility of the executive to the legislative, and for 

 the maintenance of harmony between the two, 

 were deemed needful, it might be provided that, 

 besides the limitation of office to a certain term, 

 each member of the council should be liable to 

 removal at any time for special cause, by the 

 vote of a certain proportion of the assembly. 

 Such a provision would have enabled the French 

 Legislature to get rid of Barras and his two ac- 

 complices in the Executive Directory as soon as 

 it became manifest that they were conspiring 

 against the Constitution. 



A national assembly, elected under such con- 

 ditions as may appear to be most favorable to 

 the ascendency of intelligence and public spirit, 

 representing the undivided sovereignty of the 

 nation, always in existence, renewed by such in- 

 stallments as may preserve its popular character 

 without rendering it the sport of temporary pas- 

 sion, legislating under rules the best that can be 

 devised for securing deliberate action, and in its 

 turn electing the members of a responsible execu- 

 tive — such, once more, seems the natural or- 

 ganization of a community which, in the course 

 of human progress, has discarded the hereditary 

 principle, and adopted the elective principle in its 

 stead. No constitution can protect itself against 

 the external violence of a great army, if the 

 army is willing, at the bidding of a military 

 usurper, to cut the throat of public liberty. No 

 constitution can change the political character 

 of a nation, or cure, as by magic, the weakness 

 and servility contracted by centuries of submis- 

 sion to a centralized and arbitrary administra- 

 tion. No constitution can neutralize the bad ef- 

 fects produced on public spirit and on mutual 

 confidence by the decay of religious belief in 

 the minds of a great part of the nation, and 

 the absence or imperfect development of any 

 new faith. No constitution can eliminate the 

 general vices of human nature, or the special 

 vices of the particular nation. But such a con- 

 stitution as we have indicated would at least 

 not contain in itself the certain seeds of its 

 own destruction ; it would not be liable to legal 

 dissolution by any external power ; it would 

 continue to exist, to do its work better or worse, 

 to renew itself by an operation as regular as the 

 seasons, and which there could never be a special 

 temptation to "interrupt ; without inducing tor- 

 por, it would avoid anything like a violent crisis, 

 such as is brought on by a general election, es- 



