The domestic rule of the Emperor of the French will bear comparison with that of any monarch which that people have ever had.  It is not faultless, but it is as little open to criticism of a just nature as that of any European sovereign, and with reference to the changed position of sovereigns.  We are not to compare Napoleon III. with Louis XIV., that sublime and ridiculous egotist, who seems never to have had a human feeling, except those feelings which humanity would be the better without.  The French Revolution banished that breed of kings from Christendom, if not from the world.  He must be compared with monarchs who have felt the responsibilities of their trust very differently from the man who called himself the State, who thought that twenty millions of people had been made to minister to his vanity, and who gently reproached God with ingratitude because of the victories of Eugene and Marlborough.  “God, it appears, is forgetting us,” he said, “notwithstanding all that we have done for Him.”  A monarch of this class is now as extinct as the mammoth, and traces of his footsteps excite the wonder of the disciples of political science.  In these days, a monarch must rule mostly for the people, and largely by the people.  He is only the popular chief in a country which has not a well-defined constitution over which time has thrown the mantle of reverence.  The course of Napoleon III. has been in accordance with this view of his position.  He is not the State, but he is the first man in the State.  Under his lead and direction the French have known much material prosperity, and have added not a little to that wealth which, when judiciously used as a means, and not worshipped as the end of human exertion, is the source of so much happiness.  The readiness with which the people, the masses of his subjects, subscribed to the great war-loans, contending for subscriptions as for valuable privileges, establishes both their prosperity under his government, and their confidence in that government’s strength and permanence.  That he has not made use of his power to stifle the expression of thought is clear from the numerous works that have been published, some of which were written for the purpose of attacking his dynasty,—­authors of eminence choosing to pervert history by converting its volumes into huge partisan pamphlets, in which the subject handled and the object aimed at are alike libelled.  He has kept the press, meaning the journals, more sharply reined up than Englishmen and Americans have approved or can approve; but as French journalists, instead of confining their political warfare to its proper use, are in the habit, when free to publish what they please, of assailing the very existence of the government itself, he has some excuse for his conduct.  An English journal which should recommend the dethronement of Victoria would be as summarily silenced as ever was a French White, Blue, or Red paper.  The most determined advocate of freedom of discussion must