of the last, and the loyalty of the other three, must force them to oppose a Bonapartist dynasty, whatever might be the conduct of the reigning emperor.  But if Louis Napoleon should ever think the time, to which he professes to look forward, arrived—­if he should ever grant to France, or accept from her, institutions really constitutional; institutions, under which the will of the nation, freely expressed by a free press and by freely chosen representatives, should control and direct the conduct of her governor—­the Parliamentarians would eagerly rally round him.  On the same conditions they would support with equal readiness Henri V. or the Comte de Paris, a president elected by the people, or a president nominated by an Assembly.  They are the friends of liberty, whatever be the form in which she may present herself.’

* * * * *

’Although our author visits the Provinces, his work contains no report of their political feelings.  The explanation probably is, that he found no expression of it The despotism under which France is now suffering is little felt in the capital.  It shows itself principally in the subdued tone of the debates, if debates they can be called, of the Corps Legislatif, and the inanity of the newspapers.  Conversation is as free in Paris as it was under the Republic.  Public opinion would not support the Government in an attempt to silence the salons of Paris.  But Paris possesses a public opinion, because it possesses one or two thousand highly educated men whose great amusement, we might say whose great business, is to converse, to criticise the acts of their rulers, and to pronounce decisions which float from circle to circle, till they reach the workshop, and even the barrack.  In the provinces there are no such centres of intelligence and discussion, and, therefore, on political subjects, there is no public opinion.  The consequence is, that the action of the Government is there really despotic; and it employs its irresistible power in tearing from the departmental and communal authorities all the local franchises and local self-government which they had extorted from the central power in a struggle of forty years.

’Centralisation, though it is generally disclaimed by every party that is in opposition, is so powerful an instrument that every Monarchical Government which has ruled France since 1789 has maintained, and even tried to extend it.

’The Restoration, and the Government of July, were as absolute centralisers as Napoleon himself.  The local power which they were forced to surrender they made over to the narrow pays legal, the privileged ten-pounders, who were then attempting to govern France.  The Republic gave the election of the Conseils generaux to the people, and thus dethroned the notaries who governed those assemblies when they represented only the bourgeoisie.  The Republic made the Maires elective; the Republic placed education in the hands of the local authorities.