We passed on to the increased and increasing population of Paris.

‘The population of Paris,’ I said, ’is only half that of London, while that of the British Islands is not three-fourths that of France.  If you were to double the population of Paris, therefore, it would still be proportionally less than that of London.’

‘That is true,’ said Tocqueville, ’but yet there are many circumstances connected with the Parisian population each of which renders it more dangerous than the London one.  In the first place, there is the absence of any right to relief.  The English workman knows that neither he nor his family can starve.  The Frenchman becomes anxious as soon as his employment is irregular, and desperate when it fails.  The English workmen are unacquainted with arms, and have no leaders with military experience.  The bulk of the Frenchmen have served, many of them are veterans in civil war, and they have commanders skilled in street-fighting.  The English workmen have been gradually attracted to London by a real and permanent demand for their labour.  They have wives and children.  At least 100,000 men have been added to the working population of Paris since the coup d’etat. They are young men in the vigour of their strength and passions, unrestrained by wives or families.  They have been drawn hither suddenly and artificially by the demolition and reconstruction of half the town, by the enormous local expenditure of the Government, and by the fifty millions spent in keeping the price of bread in Paris unnaturally low.  The 40,000 men collected in Paris by the construction of the fortifications are supposed to have mainly contributed to the revolution of 1848.  What is to be expected from this addition of 100,000?  Then the repressive force is differently constituted and differently animated.  In England you have an army which has chosen arms as a profession, which never thinks of any other employment, and indeed is fit for no other, and never expects any provision except its pay and its pension.  The French soldier, ever since 1789, is a citizen.  He serves his six years because the law and the colonel force him to do so, but he counts the days until he can return to his province, his cottage, and his field.  He sympathises with the passions of the people.  In the terrible days of June, the army withstood the cries, the blessings, the imprecations and the seductions of the mob, only because they had the National Guards by their side.  Their presence was a guarantee that the cause was just.  The National Guards never fought before as they did in those days.  Yet at the Chateau d’Eau, the miraculous heroism and the miraculous good luck of Lamoriciere were necessary to keep them together.  If he had not exposed himself as no man ever did, and escaped as no man ever did, they would have been broken.’

‘I was there,’ said Scheffer, ’when his fourth horse was killed under him.  As the horse was sinking he drew his feet out of the stirrups and came to the ground without falling; but his cigar dropped from his mouth.  He picked it up, and went on with the order which he was giving to an aide-de-camp.