and the exile of Bolingbroke and Ormond.  The last pronounced appearance of it was in 1742, when Sir Robert Walpole’s enemies, not content with his political fall, sought his life.  They failed utterly, and for one hundred and twenty years the course of English politics has been strictly constitutional, an opposition party being, as it were, the complement of the administration or ministry.  The same party divisions that existed in England under George II. substantially exist under the grand-daughter of his grandson.  So has it been in the United States, though it would not be difficult to show that none of our parties have been so free from approaching to the verge of illegality as English parties have been since 1714; and the conduct of the present American opposition is simply detestable, and has destroyed the national constitution.

The French began their political imitation of the English in 1789.  As in most imitations, caricature has largely predominated in it.  The one thing that might advantageously have been imitated they have altogether neglected.  They never have been able to comprehend the nature and the purpose of an opposition party, and hence every such party that has come into existence in France has been treated by the governing party as if it were composed of enemies of the State.  When the Jacobins sent the Girondins to the scaffold, and when Robespierre and St. Just sent Danton and Desmoulins to the same place, and when the Thermidorians so disposed of Robespierre and St. Just, they did no more than has been done by other French political leaders, except that their measures were more trenchant than have been those of later statesmen of their country.  The reason why the Revolution led to a military despotism was, that no party would tolerate its political foes, much less protect them in the exercise of the right of free discussion and legal action.  The execution of Louis XVI. was but a solitary incident in the game that was played by the most excitable political gamblers that ever converted a nation into a card-table.  He was slain, not so much because he was a king, or had been one, as because he was the natural chief of the Royal party, a party which the Republicans would not spare.  Party after party rose and fell, the leaders perishing under the guillotine, or flying from their country, or being sent to Guiana.  Despotism came as a relief to the people who were thus tormented by the bloody freaks of men who were energetic only as murderers.  There probably never was a more popular government than Bonaparte’s Consulship, in its first days.  Soon, however, the old evil renewed itself in full force.  A few men, the most conspicuous of whom was Carnot, confined their opposition to the policy of the government, and kept themselves within the limits of the law; but others were less scrupulous, and labored for the destruction of the government, and compassed the death of the governors.  Jacobins were as bad as Royalists,