302 POLITICS 



Bisset, of all men, should admit that the Revolution did not end 

 in Caesarism. " If there is one principle in all modern history," to 

 quote Frederic Harrison again, "it is this: that the Revolution did 

 not end with the whiff of grapeshot by which Bonaparte extin- 

 guished the dregs of the Convention." 



In France the fires of republicanism never went out, though at 

 times smouldering. They burst forth powerfully under Louis 

 Philippe in the Second Republic, in the present republic these 

 republics no new creations, but adjourned sessions, as it were, of 

 the original. Since 1789 every anti-republican polity arising in 

 France has passed its life in unstable equilibrium. 



Elsewhere in Europe as well, old style political ideas began to 

 lose power. Constitutions were in time introduced in all the Ger- 

 man states. A national-liberal party rose in Prussia, which at last, 

 after so many ages, made the political unity of Germany a reality. 



This result might have been attained much earlier but for the 

 conflict of the sentiment for unity with that for constitutional rule. 

 Prussian policy was strongly anti-republican. King William and 

 Bismarck were, so late as 1863, still heavily tarred with Metternich's 

 brush, repelling liberals like Rotteck, Welcker, and Gagern, in the 

 center and south, in lands which the confederation of the Rhine 

 had embraced, even when they were convinced that Prussian 

 victory" meant a united fatherland. Union finally came by compro- 

 mise, Prussia turning more liberal, the ultra-liberals insisting less on 

 ideally free institutions at once. 



Italy, even more than Germany, took impulse towards freedom and 

 unity from the good influences connected with French occupancy. 



Great Britain, where the good seed fell into the best ground, bene- 

 fited infinitely from the Revolution. Few English, to be sure, sym- 

 pathized with Dr. Price in seeing a millennium at hand. " What an 

 eventful period is this," he exclaims in a sermon, part of which 

 Burke quotes: " I am thankful that I have lived to see it. I could 

 almost say, Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for 

 mine eyes have seen thy salvation." 



Soberer men avowed sympathy with the essential in the new 

 movement. Fox was among these. He believed Pitt's repressive 

 measures to be of dangerous tendency. 



On Pitt's death, Sir Walter Scott wrote: 



" Now is the stately column broke, 

 The beacon light is quenched in smoke, 

 The trumpet's silver sound is still, 

 The warder silent on the hill." 



One can imagine Fox reciting this, not as a threne but as a psean. 



The career of British liberalism since Fox and Pitt's day has been 



peculiarly proud. To it is mainly due that noble succession of 



