‘It will last,’ he answered, ’until it is unpopular with the mass of the people.  At present the disapprobation is confined to the educated classes.  We cannot bear to be deprived of the power of speaking or of writing.  We cannot bear that the fate of France should depend on the selfishness, or the vanity, or the fears, or the caprice of one man, a foreigner by race and by education, and of a set of military ruffians and of infamous civilians, fit only to have formed the staff and the privy council of Catiline.  We cannot bear that the people which carried the torch of Liberty through Europe should now be employed in quenching all its lights.  But these are not the feelings of the multitude.  Their insane fear of Socialism throws them headlong into the arms of despotism.  As in Prussia, as in Hungary, as in Austria, as in Italy, so in France, the democrats have served the cause of the absolutists.  May 1852 was a spectre constantly swelling as it drew nearer.  But now that the weakness of the Red party has been proved, now that 10,000 of those who are supposed to be its most active members are to be sent to die of hunger and marsh fever in Cayenne, the people will regret the price at which their visionary enemy has been put down.  Thirty-seven years of liberty have made a free press and free parliamentary discussion necessaries to us.  If Louis Napoleon refuses them, he will be execrated as a tyrant.  If he grants them, they must destroy him.  We always criticise our rulers severely, often unjustly.  It is impossible that so rash and wrong-headed a man surrounded, and always wishing to be surrounded, by men whose infamous character is their recommendation to him, should not commit blunders and follies without end.  They will be exposed, perhaps exaggerated by the press, and from the tribune.  As soon as he is discredited the army will turn against him.  It sympathises with the people from which it has recently been separated and to which it is soon to return.  It will never support an unpopular despot.  I have no fears therefore for the ultimate destinies of my country.  It seems to me that the Revolution of the 2nd of December is more dangerous to the rest of Europe than it is to us.  That it ought to alarm England much more than France. We shall get rid of Louis Napoleon in a few years, perhaps in a few months, but there is no saying how much mischief he may do in those years, or even in those months, to his neighbours.’

‘Surely,’ said Madame de Tocqueville, ’he will wish to remain at peace with England.’

‘I am not sure at all of that,’ said Tocqueville.  ’He cannot sit down a mere quiet administrator.  He must do something to distract public attention; he must give us a substitute for the political excitement which has amused us during the last forty years.  Great social improvements are uncertain, difficult, and slow; but glory may be obtained in a week.  A war with England, at its beginning, is always popular.  How many thousand volunteers would he have for a “pointe” on London?