J^M-'%k-'"' ■•
 
 L I E) I^A RY 
 
 OF THL 
 
 U N IVER5ITY 
 
 or ILLINOIS
 
 
 EUROPE IN 1882: OUT OF THE SHADOW, 
 
 THE 
 
 ROYAL FAMILY 
 
 OF 
 
 FRANCE 
 
 TWEL VE LECTURES ON CURRENT FRENCH 
 HISTORY. 
 
 BY 
 
 L. EDWARD HENRY, B.A., M.R.CP., 
 
 WELLINGTON COLLEGE. 
 
 G. BISHOP, I J. WELLS, 
 
 Bookseller to Wellington College. | Bookseller to Winchester College. 
 
 LIBRAIRIE GALIGNANI, 
 
 224, RUE DE RIVOLI, 224. 
 
 All rights reseji'cd.
 
 Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London.
 
 A MONSIEUR 
 
 ALBERT DU BOYS, 
 
 ANCIEN JUGE, 
 
 l'ami sincere de la VERITE, 
 
 l'eLOQUENT D^FENSEUR DU DROIT, 
 
 l'ecrivain distingue, 
 
 l'illustre champion des libertes nationales, 
 
 en memoire DU grand eveque d'orli^ans, 
 
 MGR. DUPANLOUP, 
 
 ce travail est dedie 
 
 PAR 
 
 SON jeune ami reconnaissant, 
 L. E. HENRY.

 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 We do not belong, it is true, to the schools of Politics or Diplo- 
 macy, to that privileged class of men who are vowed to the study 
 of international evils and of the means to combat them. To a 
 certain extent, therefore, it is a bold act on our part to dare set 
 before the eyes of men of practical experience an Essay which 
 cannot but betray a lack of science, as well as of the requisite 
 capacity for treating of so delicate a subject as the history of 
 the completely legitimate, though shamefully usurped, rights of the 
 Royal Family of a foreign country. But since educated men are 
 ever indulgent to one who, in good faith, and with praiseworthy 
 intent, desires to contribute, as far as he can, to the welfare of his 
 fellows, whether friends or strangers, we think that our rashness 
 will find an excuse in his eyes, on the ground of the feelings which 
 have prompted this humble work. 
 
 If in this short Essay there is nothing entirely new or original, 
 it can at least serve to induce competent readers, impressed with 
 the advantages which may accrue to mankind from the deep study 
 of the rights of each individual, to enter upon the necessary 
 research with the devotion and attention that is due to so deeply 
 interesting a subject. 
 
 History Proper is the written testimony of our fellow-men's 
 past or present deeds, of our fellow-men's exemplary loyalty to 
 truth and justice, or of their cowardly subserviency to lies and 
 injustice. This idea sums up, on the one hand, the whole and 
 sole source of a man's right to his fellow-man's gratitude or scorn ;
 
 Introdtiction. 
 
 whilst it plainly shows, on the other side, why many a man in- 
 defatigably searches through and other men deliberately shun the 
 eloquent and impressive Annals of Time. We are writing from 
 both past and present History, and our fervent hope is, that this 
 our present work may prove a timely warning against any ignorant, 
 misunderstood, or distorted reading of the History of France, 
 especially for the last thirty-five years. We do not profess to 
 judge; we are studying the History of France, which we are bid- 
 den to teach the young entrusted to our care. We will not sub- 
 stitute our own views : we simply take to and shape our task 
 according to the safe control of French tradition and the realities 
 of French life. We are not slavishly bound to any foregone 
 conclusions, and our only guide in our study of History, ot 
 opinions, and of principles, is the past and existing state of things, 
 which decidedly is the most eloquent protest against the immoral 
 and unlawful perpetrations of many contemporary politicians in 
 Europe just now. In the present age, other views may be 
 common ; but many there are still who would rather remain old- 
 fashioned enough to keep faith to old creeds, and who dare reply 
 to the modern sceptic, that, in spite of his science, there are 
 ''more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in his 
 philosophy." There is a time when it is clearly demonstrable that 
 men cease to be Representatives of the people. That time seems 
 now arrived for France. The French Parliament now sitting at 
 Paris do not represent the people, and it is not cancelling a piece 
 of parchment that can win back a nation. Legislators — be they 
 of the deepest tint of aristocracy or a horde of hoary jobbers and 
 "gentlemen of the road" — must respect the fears and resentments 
 of the bulk of that nation. 
 
 A fair field given them and yet unwon, a continuous waste ot 
 time and public money, and disquieting signs of the times, with 
 a pregnant significance of their own, only show for the third time 
 — no fair-minded observer is ignorant of this curious phenomenon 
 — that French Republicans naturally and inevitably lead their
 
 Introduction. 
 
 country to the ever same end : breaking the heart and sucking the 
 brains of France, and unsettling the peaceful relations of Europea7i 
 Powers. In short, whatever be the poHcy and views of the men 
 of that party — be they those of a tame and apathetic King Pdtaud 
 or those of the one-eyed Opportunists with their packs of mad 
 and sanguinary hounds — the ever same conclusion appears the 
 only practical and wise one to come to with nations strangers 
 to such Schools of politics : some evils, worse than any we know 
 of lurk beneath the attractive name of a pure ^^ Democracy, ^^ 
 Republican first, and patriotic next. 
 
 In the present instance, we are judging from the stormy sky. 
 And we may safely foreshadow the future by the past, and predict 
 with certainty that the end (however far distant it may be), will 
 crown the conduct of the piece at the Elysium : political dis- 
 honour and suicide will terminate the career of contemporary 
 Republicans in France, just like the exasperating and disgusting 
 policy of their predecessors stopped short the latter on their 
 perilous way, and caused the ignominious and timely fall of the 
 first two Republics. Were they fair-minded men, Republicans 
 and other partisans everywhere else, as much as among French- 
 men, would read History, and take its warnings to heart, clinging 
 as fast to History and to the good institutions of their country, as 
 to a life-saving buoy. Molyneux, who first formulated the case of 
 Ireland, lays down a proposition which is as true of the current 
 political and social transactions of the French, as of the trans- 
 action to which he applies it : " If a villain, with a pistol at my 
 breast, makes me convey my estate to him, no one will say that 
 this gives him any right, and yet such a title as this has an 
 unjust conqueror (Republican or Imperial, political or social), 
 who, with a sword at my throat, forces me into submission." 
 
 It is acknowledged all over the world, that MM. Leon Gam- 
 betta and Clemenceau are the past, present, and coming Head 
 Managers of the Third Commonwealth of the French. As to M. 
 Gambetta, facts show how soon and how miserably that dethroned
 
 8 IntrodiLction. 
 
 Numidian god failed when at the helm, mercilessly used up in 
 no time, caught in his own net of woven fancies, "of Heaven, 
 and earth, and God, and men forlore/' after scorning the base 
 degrees whereby he did ascend. " Luckless speech," with 
 "bootless boast," sum up his past official career, for which an 
 Englishman would have to pay full dear by being sent "upon 
 the lonesome wild," and there sing his solitary song. Is France 
 greater in truth, and the middle or labouring classes in France hap- 
 pier ? Quite the reverse, to all appearances. As was expected by 
 those who know Frenchmen : high-sounding speeches, dishonoured 
 pledges, political uneasiness, social disturbances, a fast approach- 
 ing civil war, a ferocious bigotry (the laughing-stock of Europe) 
 which robs Frenchmen of even "freedom to worship God," the 
 rottening of the sound imaginations and feelings of a nation 
 naturally generous, moral, religious, highly intelligent, and brave, 
 but unstable, alas ! as water, and pliable as the reed that is shaken 
 by the wind. That constitutes MM. L^on Gambetta's and 
 Cl^menceau's balance-sheet for 187 5-1882. Such are the results 
 naturally to be expected from any man engaged in politics, who 
 hangs on weak concessions for party ends, made especially to a 
 " popular " clamour of which the distinctly cowardly and brutal 
 features cannot and shall not be tolerated by Monarchical Europe. 
 
 " Ruffians, pitiless as proud, 
 Heaven awards the vengeance due ; 
 
 Shame and ruin wait for you ! " 
 
 Past and current History at least allow a stranger to think 
 that French Monarchists, Conservative and Liberal, have given 
 and would give again a better account of themselves, and that 
 both France and all classes of Frenchmen would more com- 
 fortably fare at the hands of men who own a nature not less 
 patriotic (to say the least), are possessed of more self-reverence, 
 self-knowledge, and self-control ; of a knowledge of both France 
 and the world at large not less practical, far wider, less narrow
 
 M. l6on gambetta's death. 
 
 We may not here dwell on the startling passing away of M. 
 Gambetta since we wrote this Essay. May God have dealt very 
 graciously with him ! Anyhow, we see that God alone is All-wise; 
 and the enemies alike of His religion and kings no longer see 
 how to defend that presumptuous wisdom which 'too long they 
 believed infallible; and for the moment those giddy men are 
 staggering in disappointment and exasperation by the shock of 
 their chiefs death. Let us mourn over their strange insensibility 
 or, worse still, over the mischief which their shortsightedness 
 inflicts on the men and women of France, and indeed very truly 
 on themselves. 
 
 L. E. H.
 
 Introduction. 
 
 and in truth less prejudiced, nay, more sincere than the bubbling 
 and muddling sets of current Republicans. Who is there who, 
 being thoroughly acquainted with our neighbouring friends over 
 the Channel, will deny that, both at home and abroad, France 
 will prove happier under less visionary theorists and less furious 
 patriots? More hopefulness and quietude, at all events, more 
 religion and morality therefrom^ more oneness in feeling and 
 interest between French people decidedly would grow speedily 
 in the place of sensitive and selfish Babelites who grow nothing 
 else but social disaffection and political Revolution. For these 
 unfortunate ones we heartily utter Pindar's fervent request to 
 Jupiter : — 
 
 '* Grant them, O Jove ! each crooked path to shun, 
 Single and straight their honest race to run ! 
 So may theirs be 
 No name to tinge with shame their children's cheek ! 
 Gold, lands, let others seek ; 
 
 They ask an honoured grave, the good to adorn, 
 And load the vile with scorn." 
 
 Wishing for them Shakespeare's consoling and truly patriotic 
 speed : — 
 
 " Fear no more the heat of the sun, 
 
 N or the furious winter's rages ; 
 
 Thou thy worldly task hast done, 
 
 Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages." 
 
 Wellington College, 
 November. 1882.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction 5 
 
 I. Genealogical Tables : The Royal Family of 
 
 France 13 
 
 II. Signs of Times 17 
 
 III. Current History of France . . . . • 39 
 
 IV. The Royal Family of France , . .• . .49 
 V. Covenant 52 
 
 VI. Legitimacy, or Right 60 
 
 VII. Bourbons 71 
 
 VIII. Orleanists 76 
 
 IX. Reconciliation 81 
 
 X. Thiers 86 
 
 XI. Duty 93 
 
 XII. Conclusion 96
 
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 Deposed in 752. 
 
 * 
 
 Guillotined January 21, 1793. 
 
 Died imprisoned in the Tower of 
 the Temple (Paris), June 8, 1795. 
 
 Brother to Louis XVI. 
 
 Brother to Louis XVI. 
 
 Born September 29, 1820, now re- 
 siding at Frohsdorff (Austria). 
 
 1 
 
 
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 •^Ti-t^ t^t^ON cjvNfO coio wivo VO r>. t^ : 00 00 • 
 
 S 
 < 
 
 The Merovingian House. 
 Clovis, "The Hairy," King of the Salic Franks . 
 Childeric III., last of the race 
 
 The Carlovingian House. 
 Pepin ' ' The Short, " son of Charles Martel 
 Charlemagne, the Great, Emperor of the West . 
 Louis v., " The Indolent," the last of the race . 
 The Capetian House. 
 
 Hugh Capet, " The Great " 
 
 Louis IX., " St. Louis " 
 
 Charles IV., " The Handsome " .... 
 
 The House of Valois. 
 Philippe VI. de Valois, " The Fortunate " . 
 Henri III., the last of the race ..... 
 
 The House of Bourbon. 
 Henri IV,, " the Great," King of Navarre . 
 
 Louis XIIL, "The Just" 
 
 Louis XIV. "The Great," Dieudonne 
 
 Louis XV., "The Well-Beloved" .... 
 
 Louis XVI \ 
 
 Louis XVII . 
 
 Louis XVIII 
 
 Charles X 
 
 HENRI v., Comte de Chambord .... 
 
 1 
 
 •H N c^ ^ 10 VO t>.oo c^ •-" M fo Ti- ii->vo r^co c^
 
 14 The Royal Fmnily of France. 
 
 11. The Royal Family of France. 
 
 Henri V. 
 
 {Co7nfe de Chambord^ Due de Bordeatix). 
 
 The lawful King of Fra7ice, born 29th September, 1820. H. R. H. 
 
 the Comte de Chambord succeeded to the Throne as Henri V. 
 
 on the abdication of his Royal grandfather, King Charles X., 
 
 on 2nd August, 1840. His Royal Highness is without issue. 
 
 Louis 
 
 {Cofnte de Paris). 
 
 Heir-Expectant. His Royal Highness Louis, Comte de Paris, 
 born 24th August, 1838, is the eldest son of Ferdinand Philippe, 
 Duke d'Orleans (eldest son of King Louis-Philippe and Queen 
 Marie-Ame'lie), by Helena, Princess of Mecklenburg-Schwerin; 
 and has issue. His Royal Highness's eldest son and heir is Prince 
 Louis- Philippe, Duke d'Orleans, a pupil at the College Stanislas 
 (Paris). H. R. H. the Comte de Paris passed his youth in exile, 
 and is a thorough master of Constitutional and Military science 
 and of all the great social problems. His Royal Highness's 
 intelligence, labours, and devotion fit him for the first place 
 in the Royal House of France, after H. R. H. the Comte de 
 Chambord. May the day be long distant ere H. R. H. the 
 Comte de Paris can be King of France ; but if ever His Royal 
 Highness does wear the Crown, he will never disgrace the Throne, 
 for few Frenchmen in the records of French History have been 
 born with such mental gifts and such promising signs of a happy 
 reign as the present Heir-Apparent to the French Crown. 
 
 Royal Princes and Princesses. 
 
 I. His Royal Highness Robert, Duke de Chartres, only brother 
 to the Comte de Paris. His Royal Highness has issue ; and His 
 Royal Highness's eldest son and heir is Prince Henri d'Orleans, 
 a pupil also at the College Stanislas. H. R. H. the Duke de 
 Chartres (the present Colonel commanding the 12th Chasseurs a
 
 The Royal Fmnily of Frmice. 15 
 
 cheval, now stationed at Rouen) fought, — in spite of the unwiUing- 
 ness of the men of September 4th, 1870, — in the ranks of the 
 French army, where his deeds of valour recalled to friends and 
 strangers alike the legends of the chivalrous days of Robert the 
 Brave, whose name he has proved himself worthy to bear. 
 
 2. His Royal Highness Charles, Duke de Nemours. H. R. H. 
 the Duke de Nemours, King Louis-Philippe's second son, is the 
 living portrait of Henri IV. This Prince is that brilliant officer of 
 Constantine fame who refused to be the King of Belgium, whose 
 traditions and whose memory are treasured by the body of Cavalry 
 Officers in France. 
 
 3. His Royal Highness Francois, Prince de Joinville. H. R. H. 
 the Prince de Joinville is the same naval officer who com- 
 manded (1837) the French warships in Mexico, and brought back 
 Napoleon's body from St. Helena (on board the " Belle Poule," 
 1840). Admiral H. R. H. the Prince de Joinville, when the 
 National Defence Committee refused him the right to fight for 
 his country as a Volunteer, followed the Army of the Loire under 
 the name of a foreign Officer. His Royal Highness was seen on 
 the day of the battle of Orleans serving in a naval battery. 
 Unknown personally to all, he was instinctively dbeyed by all, 
 both Officers and men. Happy then was he, because, while 
 checking the enemy's march and protecting the retreat of the 
 French Army, he brought his brave, though disguised, sword to 
 the city of Joan of Arc. H. R. H. Prince de Joinville's son, 
 the Duke de Penthievre, now serving in the French Navy, bids 
 fair to show in his naval career the talents of his illustrious 
 father. 
 
 4. His Royal Highness He?iri, Duke d'Aumale, of Algerian 
 fame, and a familiar face to Englishmen, wields the pen no less 
 well than the sword. Lieutenant-General H. R. H. the Duke 
 d'Aumale is the General in whom Officers in the French Army 
 have found their true Commander-in-Chief. Both French and 
 native troops in Algeria have seen His Royal Highness at work 
 long enough and been gallantly led by him to the fire often 
 enough, to trust in their soldier Prince. 
 
 5. His Royal Highness Antoine, Duke de Montpensier. H. 
 R. H. the Duke de Montpensier is King Alfonso's (Spain) father-
 
 1 6 The Royal Family of Finance. 
 
 in-law. The late Queen Mercedes, His Majesty's first Royal 
 Consort, was the youthful daughter of His Royal Highness. 
 
 6. His Royal Highness the Duke d'Alengon. H. R. H. the 
 Duke d'Alengon has greatly distinguished himself as an Officer 
 in the French Artillery. 
 
 Such is the brilliant Royal House of France, so called because 
 it is the living personification of France, and because, having in 
 the course of ages founded, with the nation's help, the unity of 
 France, it now appears the last and only hope of Frenchmen, 
 in the midst of their sorrows and their disasters. Let us bring it 
 home to ourselves, although strangers only reading of the life 
 of others ; and may it go home to the mind of Frenchmen, that 
 the safety of France is in the Monarchy, and that elsewhere 
 people can find nought but ruin and calamity. But pubhc 
 dinners and bands of music, health -drinking and dancing should 
 not be the end of the work of Monarchical Frenchmen. Rather 
 may Frenchmen let these be the signal and the starting-point 
 for a deeper union, a keener energy, a livelier hope, and even a 
 firmer certainty of an early and rapid triumph. Surely of this 
 triumph no Frenchman ought to doubt any longer, were French- 
 men to open their eyes to see that their best friends and true 
 chiefs are an august legion of Princes, as noble-minded as 
 high-born. In short, and the primary thing of all, an August 
 Royal Family, headed by the lawful King of France.
 
 •' Deum timeto : regem honorato : virtutem colito : disciplinis bonis 
 operum dato." 
 
 THE ROYAL FAMILY OF FRANCE. 
 
 II. 
 
 SIGiVS OF TIMES. 
 
 The French at last appear to find out that contentment with one's 
 lot is an element of happiness, and that in their changes of 
 government since February, 1848, they have changed nothing be- 
 yond the names of their masters. Frenchmen — since King Louis 
 Philippe's abdication — exchanged the paternal rule of their Kings 
 with the all-beneficial influence of the Royal Family of France for 
 the yoke of fawning parasites ; for an infernal mismanagement of 
 the State affairs under self-seeking adventurers, under inexperi- 
 enced politicians and heathenish doctrinaires, under greedy sets 
 of priggish stock-jobbers and comically ignorant red-tapists ; in 
 short, under squad after squad, or rather under batch after batch, 
 of aboriginals of Colney Hatch, more jealous and more disunited 
 the one than the other. To-day's history declares about our 
 neighbours across the Channel scarcely anything better than that. 
 It seems likely that the course of events in France will shortly 
 lead strangers, who may desire to understand the remarkably 
 powerful (for better or for worse) influence of that country in 
 Europe, to study her History anew, and to test the true and just 
 claims of the lawful Heir to the French Crown. Bossuet, when 
 tutor to the Dauphin of France, rightly taught his Royal pupil to 
 look upon History as the most important of all secular studies for 
 a King. The Eagle of Meaux might have added that History is 
 all-important for every man who will put away vulgar^ conwion 
 ideaSy and seek after 7'oyal thoughts. This is an occasion for us to 
 
 17
 
 1 8 The Royal Family of Finance, 
 
 appeal to home readers of good faith in favour of an event which 
 contemporary echoes all now acknowledge as a probable one at 
 least : we mean, the approaching re-establishment of Monarchy 
 in France. Considering what France was under her Kings, what 
 she now is, and how many troubles she has had to endure at the 
 hands of intriguers, the conclusion in its substance, in its nudity, 
 in its complete entirety, accepted by all men able to read French 
 History, is surely that France always was, is at heart, and should 
 remain what Great Britain is, and rightly wishes to remain, 
 i.e., a Constitutional Monarchy. Unless deliberately ignoring the 
 History of France before 1792, surely no one will contend that a 
 King on the Throne of France will prove a step in advance from 
 complexity to simplicity in settling the internal and foreign diffi- 
 culties of Europe, unable as we are, to do without France. As 
 to political farceurs, suspicious minds and interested partisans 
 of the Imperial or Republican confraternities, we do not expect 
 to see them accept our views. Calamities never teach wisdom to 
 fools. But cordially we acknowledge that those birds of passage, 
 worshippers of the rising sun, who follow wherever the crowd 
 leads, render it possible that the wise should avail themselves of 
 the emergency. And this we mean and will endeavour to do to 
 the best of our power. 
 
 Our political faith as based on French History is not disguised : 
 and, following the example of H.R.H. the Comte de Paris, and 
 other Princes of the Orleans family, we acknowledge that France 
 should pledge her allegiance and life to her sole lawful or 
 legitimate Sovereign, the Duke de Bordeaux and Comte de 
 Chambord, Henri V., absent, but never forgotten. French 
 Monarchists will have proved by their constancy that they are not 
 mere worshippers of success, but faithful subjects of an exiled 
 King. The rights of the royal exile of Frohsdorff are beyond 
 cavil; and the object of all the veneration and demonstrations in 
 his favour is himself worthy ot even more than that which is 
 given him. The Comte de Chambord, blameless as a man as 
 well as a Prince, is every inch of him the "Roy." Amidst 
 the terrible events which have delivered up France to political 
 quacks, he stands out as the champion of unalloyed patriot- 
 ism enlightened by religion. He may never reign, for duplicity
 
 SigJis of Times. 
 
 and dissimulation find no echo in his heart ; and he alone can 
 once for all remove the difficulties which delay the fusion of all 
 Monarchist Frenchmen into one body. But his adherents will 
 remain true to him to the last, or until such time as he bids them 
 to follow their chief's Heir- Apparent, H.R.H. the Comte de Paris. 
 It is worthy of note that His Majesty the Emperor of Austria, on 
 his way to Trieste, made a short stay at Frohsdorff. This is the 
 first time that any living King or Emperor has openly visited 
 H.R.H. the Comte de Chambord. But the present state of things 
 in France could not fail to draw the Emperor of Austria and 
 Hungary to the side of the chief living representative of French 
 Monarchy. 1 Indodi discunf, ainent vieitiinisse periti ! Of one 
 fact we remind intelligent men, open to a sense of truth and 
 justice towards their next-door neighbour as much as towards 
 themselves : when self-styled politicians, only busy in now turning 
 out of their situation well-informed and valuable advisers, have 
 done masquerading as patriots, the hypocritically disguised King 
 Petaud is sure, sooner or later, to be stripped off, and the certain 
 sequel is humiliating exposure and fall. We will wait and also 
 
 ^ Prince Bismarck — who is not the man of an idle, shuflETing, sceptical and 
 embittered political turn of mind — is well aware that a general feeling of dis- 
 gust has arisen throughout Europe, thanks to the bad faith and unpractical 
 government of the French Republic. M. de Bismarck knows that H. R. H. 
 the Comte de Chambord is no adventurer seeking after power, and that His 
 Royal Highness is in no way effaced. Perhaps Germany would not discourage 
 the efforts of French Monarchists. King Humbert of Italy would probably 
 have no scruples in following the example of Austria and Germany. His 
 Italian Majesty leads a trembling existence at theQuirinal or at Monza; and he 
 feels that the Republic of France is probably destined to be the forerunner of that 
 of Italy, just as the unification of Italy was the forerunner of that of Germany. 
 Alexander III. has already sent forth his Russian doves with the olive-branch 
 from his Northern Empire. Indeed, in this present Europe, honey-combed 
 with sedition, and bristling with concealed daggers in the hands of the modern 
 breed of low democrats, once more it proves to those who required further 
 proof, that such a disorderly government as has been the rule in France for the 
 past few years is inconsistent with real social and commercial prosperity in any 
 country in general and in Europe in particular. Confidence, which is the very 
 breath of life to private or public success and happiness, refuses to spring up 
 and flourish in an atmosphere of sedition and conspiracy. The Moonlighter 
 and the Assassin, the Land League and self-styled Nationalism in Ireland, are 
 plainly and visibly to Englishmen the most telling and truest evidence about 
 what we are to expect from present and past democrats.
 
 23 The Royal Family of France. 
 
 remind the reader that French Monarchists always were, and still 
 are, a set of "braves gens" and "gens braves," and no evil-hearted 
 crowd or Soho scamps ; in short, they are Christian Socialists, and 
 Christian Nationalists. 
 
 Our seemingly hopeless task is much lighter since we do not 
 write for the satisfying the coarse inquisitiveness of the " people ;" 
 nor are we writing for that " varia et mutabilis, rudis indigestaque 
 moles," the "anima vilis" of modern polling-booths. Our efforts 
 only court the attention of friends whose knowledge of the History, 
 the manners and speech of our neighbours on the other side of 
 the " silver streak " is not derived from their light literature and 
 from what may be termed the "boulevard" journalism and feuil- 
 letonism. 
 
 By our experience of arduous routes — for the teaching as the 
 learning life is uphill indeed — we know that no doubt trials and 
 the " furrows of care " must occur along the road on the way ; 
 and men of standing and position far higher than ours could 
 tell us, that they are not better off in that respect than their 
 lower brethren in society. Meanwhile, through these trials of 
 the feal ones, we feel that men are being enlightened, doctrines 
 proved, the cycle of experience completed, errors removed and 
 truth more dominant. After being almost shipwrecked on the 
 rock of improbabihty, men must meet in the safe haven of the 
 possible at last. In reference to the subject of this work, we 
 are told : " Monarchy is impossible and hopeless in France ! " 
 " All will be social and political changes, no guarantees of good 
 government, stagnant politics ! " " The Monarchical party is not 
 a formidable set of men pitted against the Liberal propensities ot 
 thousands of Frenchmen!" "Their remaining true to tradition 
 is as little likely to restore a King to the throne of France, as 
 the Stuarts were to oust the Hanoverians!" "Men indifferent 
 alike to the principles they profess to believe and the interests 
 which they certainly value!" "Men utterly unable to read the 
 meaning of contemporary events ! " " Men devoid of political 
 wisdom, industry, and determination ! " "A set of men who 
 shipwrecked their best chances on the rocks of Frohsdorff ! " 
 In short, the talismanic " Reaction I Readionnaires I " 
 
 Such is the stock of loose or inaccurate, abusive or fanatical
 
 Signs of Times. 
 
 statements made by men deliberately or indeliberately forgetful 
 that French Reactionnaires have done the best service to their 
 country as soldiers, sailors, diplomatists, or statesmen, as ever 
 service was done. This cavilling style of speech shows no know- 
 ledge of the History of the country, no humour, no high education. 
 And the generous feelings of Englishmen, their good sense and 
 affectionate reverence for Royalty, demand that, before giving his 
 verdict against any man and any body of men, a judge should be 
 known to all of us as a man of a pure patriotism and above all 
 reproach in his own life, a pattern of every manly virtue, able to 
 enforce the virtues, or, at the very least, the semblance of the 
 virtues, a large portion of which he expects elevated men as the 
 humble ones to possess. The true-blue French Tory and stead- 
 fast reactionary, the ^^ afitediluvian,'' the. sombre and austere (if 
 you like) French Monarchist is a true patriot and perfectly honest 
 man, and not born some centuries too late to be fitted for the 
 age he is called upon to live in. Since cur students are to be 
 taught now in their University lectures (this we are glad to hear) 
 the History of France, they must learn that Kings and Queens, 
 and not Imperialism or Republicanism inade France, just like 
 Kings and Queens, and not the Commonwealth, made England. 
 And the Royal Family of France, the lawful King with his lawful 
 Heirs and Family are living in spite of the comic milk-and-water 
 Politics as preached now-a-days at Albert Gate respecting the 
 History of France. Nay, who will deny that Imperialism and 
 Republicanism both betrayed France and sank her deep into 
 ruinous debts and pools of blood. French Kings and French 
 Royal Princes of the past may as well be called " useless " for 
 not having long ago found out railways, steam, electric telegraphs ; 
 and our Beloved Queen Victoria styled "passee" because of Her 
 Majesty not having thought of electric light forty years ago ! 
 Are France or England for that less the good result of Monarchy ? 
 To-day France is the France of French Monarchy, the only 
 difference being that under the First Napoleon the Allies entered 
 Paris on the 6th of July, 1815, and that the fallen Emperor 
 saddled France with the Treaty of Paris (1815); the Third 
 Napoleon lost Alsace less Belfort; and that the Third Republic 
 lost a large slice of Lorraine through not coming to terms with
 
 22 The Royal Family of France. 
 
 Prussia before the capitulation of Metz, French History begins 
 not either from 1870 or 1792 ; and if men, strangers to History, 
 cannot educate, let them be educated ! Only look around to-day. 
 Let them recollect and think over the remark made by President 
 Grevy (after his acceptance of the Order of the Golden Fleece), 
 in reply to a friend who reminded him of the famous Grevy 
 Amendment, the object of which was to eliminate the President 
 of the Republic " as useless to the direction of affairs, and 
 dangerous in a country of Monarchical traditions." President 
 Grevy said : "I am giving the proof of the necessity of my 
 Amendment, and demonstrating that after me no President is 
 possible." Ve?iia?n petiinus damusgue vicissini. 
 
 By a fundamental law of nature, it is thus far at all events 
 that all Revolutions in the world usefully serve to demolish the 
 clay walls of refuge within which one-eyed politicians and so- 
 phists confide their safety. The traditions of prejudice and social 
 exclusiveness do, no doubt, go far to account for the indifference, 
 when not ignorance, about the rights of others as contained in 
 History. This we grant readily. Happily freedom of times and 
 force of character enable contemporary searchers to break through 
 barriers and to do away with the defects of a limited early educa- 
 tion and its trammels. In these days, when men are wont so 
 easily to slip out of the straight line in exchange for notoriety or 
 money, truth and fairness perhaps may prove, we fear, unfriendly 
 visitors to many. But the guiding principle, " Be just and fear 
 not," infallibly wins hearers at the least. And to these we offer 
 this study. 
 
 Averse personally to party spirit, we gladly accept all good 
 whencesoever it come. And if we appear as a staunch defender 
 of a Christian economy, of Church and State, it is because our 
 studies and experience have taught us that outside the religion 
 of Christ, outside Christian society and Christian politics, there 
 can be found neither lasting peace, greatness, freedom, nor true 
 civilization ; only oppressive, venal and weak men. 
 
 Before we address ourselves to the question which is before us, 
 it is as well to dispose of one or two points connected with the 
 current History of France. Radicals and Republicans will have 
 some difficulty in persuading intelligent observers of facts that
 
 Signs of Times. 23 
 
 all non-Democratic Frenchmen are unpatriotic in keeping out of 
 their range altogether, instead of strengthening the hands of the 
 present Republican Government by ungrudgingly accepting what 
 some dare term an established Republic. In short, we are told 
 that all non-Republican Frenchmen are out of the political arena 
 altogether. It may be the case that a large number of so-called 
 Republicans to-day follow in the track of the Republic ; these 
 are ignorant or apathetic men who to-morrow will cry down 
 the sitting gods of October, 1882. These patriots are neither 
 ''fish, flesh, fowl, nor good red herring;" but for these men 
 to be anything and everything, to be nothing, in fact, has not 
 hitherto been regarded as a mark of superiority in France as well 
 as in England. Intelligent politicians and wise patriots in France 
 know besides, and teach their sons to remember, that the very 
 first condition of politics is that a man must accept the onward 
 movement which it implies, but never at the expense of their con- 
 science. These men should be said waiting ; but they have not 
 become isolated from politics, and they indeed are not outsiders. 
 Their notions about truth and Ues, about justice and theft, 
 practically keep them from moving ; the fact is, they will not stir 
 because they will not move in a wrong direction,' in a direction 
 offensive to the most rudimentary, to the wise and superior 
 dictates of their conscience. But the old French spirit and the 
 old French patriotism is all alive along the Monarchical lines, and 
 will at no distant date rule France once more. 
 
 For our purpose we have thought it worth while to add a few 
 notes for which we are indebted to eminent, influential French- 
 men just now " sur la breche " in Paris, battling hard for the 
 better welfare of Christian and Monarchical France : MM. 
 Frangois Beslay, A. de Cesena, Edouard Herve, de Kerohant, 
 Leon Lavedan, etc. These Publicists, seeing the miserable 
 state of things in France, feel the possibility of a higher and 
 happier state and they strive for its attainment. It is true that 
 disappointment has followed^ and again may follow their dis- 
 appointment, — 
 
 " Ye build ! ye build ! but ye enter not in, 
 
 Like the tribes whom the desert devoured in their sin ; 
 
 From the land of promise ye fade and die, 
 
 Ere its verdure gleams forth on your wearied eye."
 
 24 The Royal Family of France. 
 
 Bat not the less they trust that the tendency of the times 
 shortly will overcome the difficulties. And so we do. For theirs 
 is that unselfish patriotism which comes from intelligent search, 
 unpaid strife, and loving sacrifice : — 
 
 " Love thyself last ; cherish those hearts that love thee ; 
 
 Corruption wins not more than honesty." 
 " He is a free man whom the truth makes free, 
 
 And all are slaves beside." 
 
 And their lively and prudent direction — to-day the " faint tinges 
 of a seemingly expiring sunset " — to-morrow will be " all the 
 glory of the daybreak " : — 
 
 " Never yet 
 Share of Truth was vainly set 
 
 In the world's wide fallow ; 
 After hands shall sow the seed, 
 After hands, from hill and mead, 
 
 Reap the harvest yellow." 
 
 We give these Publicists' writings our ungrudged support, be- 
 cause, as far as they go, their writings are the result of an un- 
 common ability and a wide experience ; because they are a simple 
 and honest reproduction of truth and right, of fairness about 
 the changes and trials of France ; and because they truly tend 
 thereby to promoting a solid, durable good in their country. 
 Let us now consider their valuable suggestions. 
 
 I. How Stands Europe To-day? 
 
 Our first point is : What is the state of things in Europe just 
 now? 
 
 It has been said that Sparta blinded Greece in one eye on the 
 day she overthrew the power of Athens. As truly might it be 
 said that Germany darkened an orb of Europe when she was 
 allowed to dismember and to humble France. Since the Treaty 
 of Vienna (October 30, 1864), since the battle of Sadowa (July 
 3, 1866) ; since that year of terror which beheld the Prussian 
 Army under the walls of Paris, notwithstanding the peace of Paris 
 and the Congress of Berhn, nations wrestle in darkness ; shifting
 
 Signs of Times. 
 
 and moly politics hinder throughout the world all progress of the 
 old good traditions of private and international trust and justice. 
 Diplomacy sees all international rights of European balance, ac- 
 knowledged and revered by our forefathers, grow indistinct and 
 overcast. As a matter of fact, cheating has become right. In the 
 mind of many it may well be asked whether we are retrograding 
 towards the barbaric ages. 
 
 We are in November 1882 ; another stirring war has just closed 
 upon the banks of the Nile; British warships and British soldiers 
 have shown to the world what they can do. Great Britain may 
 rest proud of her sons ; and for once Europe should be thankful, 
 in spite of the present drifts of opinion and taste on the Con- 
 tinent. We gladly see Continental Powers acknowledge that he 
 who shares the danger and the toil ought to share the prize 
 and the profit. But the dominant fact that remains unchanged 
 still is about the state of Europe in general in 1882. 
 
 The present confused situation of European countries, linked 
 together with a network of rivalries and conspiracies, bears some 
 analogy to the situation of Europe in 1807. It is the old, old, 
 and ever new story of the Ass, the Fox, and the Lion. In 1807 
 England had sunk into the insignificant and precarious position 
 France now occupies. Napoleon I., victorious in Italy and the 
 German States, aspired to reviving for his own aggrandisement 
 the Western Empire, leaving to Russia the Eastern Empire. The 
 civilized world was threatened with the sway of two despots, 
 each ruling over a population of a hundred millions with an 
 army of fifteen hundred thousand soldiers. 
 
 Napoleon I. and the Emperor Alexander I. finally disagreed. 
 The treaty of alliance concluded at Tilsit in July 1807 was torn 
 to bits when the question was raised as to which of the two 
 Sovereigns was to have the Bosphorus ; five years later. Napoleon's 
 army lay buried in the snows of Russia. " Harm hatch, harm 
 catch." 
 
 Germany, attracting within its orbit Austria and Italy (the latter 
 a recently patented State to be used as the tampon between 
 Germany and Austria on the one side, France and England on 
 the other) aims at reconstructing' the Western Empire. England 
 seeks to strengthen and secure her Empire in the East. Thus we
 
 26 The Royal Family of Finance. 
 
 see a collision of the same ambitions and fears which strove 
 together in 1807, the only difference being that the meshes of 
 the secret plotting between the rulers of the world are woven at 
 London and Berlin, instead of at Paris and Constantinople ; and 
 that they stretch out to Cairo and the Suez Canal instead of to 
 Constantinople and the Bosphorus. Whatever the means, the 
 aim is ever the same : the division of the empire of the world. 
 Alexander I. would not allow Napoleon to blockade Europe by 
 land, and to lead his army to India. Will Prince von Bismarck 
 let England blockade it by sea, and lay hands on the Suez Canal 
 and on the future railroad to Bagdad ? 
 
 The grim iron Chancellor has been busy for the last fifteen 
 years in building up the Empire of the West ; and his work is yet 
 unfinished. Sir Garnet Wolseley, master of Cairo, has practically 
 handed over the Empire of the East to his Queen, Sovereign of 
 three kingdoms and Empress of India. It is all very well for 
 M. de Bismarck to declare that Egypt is not worth the life of a 
 single Pomeranian private soldier; "The grapes are sour, and 
 not ripe as I thought," says he. But the supremacy of Germany 
 is imperilled by the Egyptian question, and German newspapers 
 openly threaten England with the fate some day of the "sick 
 man." In the settlement of any transaction, we must recollect 
 that the covetous are poor givers, and that lukewarm friends and 
 shuffling acquaintances are more unsafe than an open enemy. 
 England is playing the conquering game, and it must be admitted 
 that she plays it with astounding and justified boldness. She has 
 sent thirty-five thousand soldiers to Egypt, including the House- 
 hold Guards, that is to say, the bulk of her available forces. Had 
 she suffered a defeat, her situation would have been most critical. 
 Successful, she will continue to prosecute her plans ; and doubt- 
 less she will take care to make friends in prosperity in order to 
 have their help in adversity. Yet we cannot suppose that M. de 
 Bismarck is inclined to allow England to grasp the Empire of the 
 East. He is simply holding back for a time whilst sending 
 Turkey to the front. He will step forward as soon as destiny 
 strikes the hour. M. de Bismarck always counts the cost before 
 he commits himself When this fatal moment comes, France, 
 mindful that time and place often give the advantage to the weak
 
 Signs of Times. 27 
 
 over the strong, could rise up, put forth her claims, and with one 
 bound regain her position, as did Austria in 1813. 
 
 " There is a tide in the affairs of men, 
 Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune." 
 
 France, mighty on the ocean, in the Mediterranean, in Europe 
 and Africa, by the twofold strength of her improved army and 
 navy, may become the arbitress, nay, the only mediatrix, be- 
 tween England and Germany. If she rose to the greatness of 
 the occasion, she might reconquer, perhaps without unsheathing 
 her sword, her prestige, her influence, and even her lost pro- 
 vinces. To pave the way for such a future she requires a 
 Minister for Foreign Affairs with the genius of a Talleyrand or 
 a Metternich, if not of a Richelieu or a Cavour. Since Re- 
 publicans have held the reins of government, the Ministers for 
 Foreign Affairs have been many and various. It is important that 
 such experiments should not be prolonged indefinitely, because in 
 quarrelhng about the shadow we often lose the substance. So 
 much for the general state of aftairs in Europe up to the present 
 month of November. 
 
 II. Republican Diplomacv. 
 
 A few days ago we read in the Voltaire (a Paris Republican 
 newspaper) some comical lines about Republican Diplomats of 
 the day. We give them in the original text : — 
 
 ^^Echine basse et chapeau bas, le dos efi arc de cercle, le ventre 
 huffiblement rentre, les epaules serrees sons r habit a la fraufaise, les 
 bras colles au corps ^ les mollets essayant de se confojidre avec les tibias, 
 tout Vetre ratatine, recroqueville^ rainasse sur lui-meme, voyez ce 
 fantoine qui passe., long, sec et plat, rasatit les murs, effleurant les 
 paves . . . Ce fantome, c'est celui de la diplomatic fra7ii;aise 
 sous la glo?'ieuse presidence de M. Jules Grevy.'" 
 
 The language is terse and the description accurate enough, 
 though far from flattering. Besides the writer of this graphic 
 and lively onslaught emphasises his ideas as follows : " Appealed 
 to from one end of the earth to the other, the French flag remains 
 unfurled. Our fleet is only surpassed by England's, yet it remains
 
 28 TJie Royal Family of France. 
 
 a mere plaything, or rather a useless toy ! From Gibraltar to 
 Port Said, from Aden to Madagascar, the shores make sport of it 
 with jeer and laughter. When speaking of French intervention 
 of the ' Invincibles ' and ' Monitors ' of France, it might well be 
 said of them as of the cuirassiers of Jean de Nivelle : ' When 
 they are called, they turn and fly.' " 
 
 The Third Republic in its foreign policy has certainly assumed 
 an attitude quite uncongenial to the French genius and tempera- 
 ment. Yet we cannot quite perceive what measures the Voltaire 
 advocates to remedy this state of affairs. " There exists," it says, 
 " an ancient, a clear tradition to guide the diplomacy of a great 
 nation." France then should return to this tradition at once. And 
 to make up for the shortness of information from our Republican 
 fellow-scribe, we will tell him that this well-defined tradition of 
 French diplomacy has had representatives illustrious enough in the 
 persons of Armand Duplessis Cardinal de Richelieu, and Mazarin, 
 in Hugues de Lyonne, de Talleyrand- Pdrigord, the Duke de 
 Richelieu, in Prince de Polignac, Drouyn de Lhuys, Thiers, the 
 Duke de Broglie. Each of these Ministers for Foreign Affairs 
 whilst holding office confronted Europe with proud and patriotic 
 attitude. But to return to their traditions would be to return to 
 the traditions of Monarchy ; and we do not imagine that the 
 Voltaii'c is inclined to renounce its gods, to trample under foot 
 its Republican convictions, and to sigh for the restoration of the 
 Monarchy to France ? 
 
 By having established a Republican form of government, France 
 has doubtless laid herself open to the suspicions of the other 
 Powers of Europe, which have all adhered to the Monarchical 
 system. The bad example she has given, and keeps giving, may 
 be overlooked on condition that she conducts herself properly 
 and quarrels with no one outdoors. No European Government 
 is anxious to enter into alliance with her. As long as she makes 
 no sign she will be unmolested in her isolation and impotence. 
 Were she to show the slightest inclination towards combativeness, 
 a coalition would be formed against her immediately. M. de 
 Freycinet would not venture on such risks, and we cannot blame 
 him. His mistake, as regards the Egyptian Question, was not 
 that he left his sword sheathed, but that he drew it half out only
 
 Signs of Times 29 
 
 to find himself compelled to let it sink into the scabbard forth- 
 with. If this Minister, with the air of a Richelieu, a Polignac, a 
 Drouyn de Lhuys, had not laid pretensions to the luxury of a 
 naval expedition and an ultimatum, France would not have 
 undergone the humiliation of seeing her fleet stationed before 
 Alexandria to witness the massacre of Frenchmen and then retiring 
 at the sound of the cannon. A rather novel experience for the 
 descendants of the sailors at Aboukir Bay and Navarino ! 
 
 We do not say that it is absolutely impossible that France should 
 form alliances or fill a distinguished place as long as she remains 
 Republican. We only wish to point out that to accomplish this 
 she must clear away many obstacles, overcome many repugnances, 
 triumph over many difficulties. The work of rehabihtation de- 
 mands time, labour, and skill of the highest order. Where is the 
 Republican statesman capable of playing such a great part ? Could 
 this rai'a avis be found on the Left, he would not be allowed the 
 time necessary for maturing his ideas. In Foreign policy five, 
 six, ten years even, of uninterrupted labour are needed before a 
 result is achieved. Under the present system the Minister for 
 Foreign Afiairs can hardly count on more than six months of 
 office. To remain a year on the Quay of Orsay would be an 
 unexpected favour from the fickle goddess. It is not difficult to 
 understand that under such a system there could be no sequence 
 or connection in the foreign policy of France. 
 
 M. Gambetta has not disguised to himself that an almost in- 
 surmountable antipathy reigns between Republican France and 
 Monarchical Europe. This is the secret of the obstinacy with 
 which he clings to an alliance with England ; the peculiar charac- 
 teristics of the English Constitution, more akin to Republican 
 principles than to Imperial notions of centralization and 
 authority, were, in M. Gambetta's idea, well calculated to facilitate 
 a reconciliation between these two great Western nations. 
 
 But the Anglo-French alliance projected by him, and which was 
 to have given rise to a political intervention in Egypt, would have 
 exposed France to a danger the consequences of which it was 
 impossible to foresee. The difficulty England experienced in 
 raising an army of from thirty to forty thousand men proves that 
 she could have tendered but slight aid to France if a Continental
 
 30 The Royal Family of France. 
 
 coalition had been formed against France and her eastern frontier 
 attacked. 
 
 As long as France has not an alliance in Europe with a Power 
 holding at its disposal a million of men, such as Russia or Austria, 
 France will be forced to remain insignificant, and her diplomacy- 
 must not dream of assuming its legacy of high traditions which the 
 Voltaire mourns over. But we cannot see that the Republic of 
 the gentlemen of the pavement can ever aspire to the alliance of 
 Russia or Austria, 
 
 Republican France of 1792 held up her head before the whole 
 of Europe. That is true. The Voltaire seems to think that 
 Republican France of 1882 might assume the same proud atti- 
 tude. " None of the great Powers," says our French contempo- 
 rary, " are prepared to make war. We alone are in a position to 
 assume a bellicose policy : amongst the nations of Europe France 
 is the one least inclined for adventure, and yet she is the one 
 who could go forth to meet it most readily and with fewest draw- 
 backs. Tight-waisted Germany sounds hollow beneath her martial 
 tunic ; the measured tread of Russia reveals the void created by 
 the miner's craft ; well set up and well ballasted, the little French 
 soldier stands ready to meet the first shock." 
 
 We do not wish to impugn the virtues of the " little French 
 soldier." But if the writer in the Voltaire has reason for relying 
 on the military strength of France, he has no right to depreciate 
 that of other European nations. Such optimism is apt to mislead 
 its votaries ; and zeal should not outrun discretion. Germany's 
 poverty is but relative ; and want of funds would not prevent her 
 making war where her interests were concerned. Russia might 
 seek in foreign complications a compensation for her home 
 troubles ; and precisely on account of her own land being under- 
 mined would she be tempted to plant her foot on safer territory 
 belonging to her neighbours. 
 
 III. The Wrong State of Things Explained. — The Remedy. 
 
 " The empire of the earth belongs to the mind," said the Pope's 
 Legate sent to France by Innocent III. to impose the decision of 
 the Holy See on King Philip Augustus in the matter of his divorce
 
 Signs of Times. 31 
 
 from the Danish Princess Ingelburga. M. Enfantin, the Pope of 
 the Saint Simoniens, appropriated this maxim in 1830, and built 
 up his whole system of government on it. 
 
 To-day, M. Vacherot handles the same thesis in the Republican 
 daily Newspaper, the Dix-Neuvihne Siecle. In his turn he studies 
 the vices of the present situation, the dangers of which he 
 acknowledges ; and, so as not to attribute these vices to Re- 
 publican institutions, which form his ideal, he imputes them to 
 individuals in an article headed The Policy of the last-horn (nou- 
 velles couches), which personages he declares " unfit for govern- 
 ment through lack of education and proper training." 
 
 Yes ; both education and training are wanting to these new 
 heirs whose advent M. Leon Gambetta predicted and prepared 
 the way for, and who to-day hold every path to power, from the 
 functions of village mayors to those of Senators and Deputies. 
 But are not institutions and individuals both alike answerable 
 for this } The Constitution of a country has inevitably and irre- 
 sistibly a powerful influence over the composition of its personal 
 and legislative government, and consequently over the direction 
 of public business. 
 
 Under the old system, at the dawn of Royalty, when the feudal 
 Nobility were honest but mostly ignorant, clerics, priests, and 
 bishops especially, ruled, not by might or right, — neither of which 
 they owned, — but by their influence ; and that influence they 
 owed to their mental superiority, to the culture of their minds, in 
 a word, to their education. Their power was a legitimate one ; 
 and though it had drawbacks, it remained for ages a medium of 
 civilization. 
 
 Under the Houses of Valois and Bourbon, the Nobility of the 
 swordy who were the Nobility by birth, the true, and one might 
 say, the only secular and traditional Nobility, wielded a sort of 
 power over the government. But their influence was far from 
 being exclusive. If the great Conde held high military command, 
 it was not only because he was of royal blood, it was also and 
 principally because he possessed in a high degree a genius for war. 
 The ancestors of Abraham de Fabert, Catinat, Vauban, of 
 Richelieu, Mazarin, de Lyonne, Colbert, and Louvois, who stood 
 so high in the councils of Royalty or in the ranks of the Army,
 
 The Royal Family of France. 
 
 did not, as far as we know, descend from the crusaders. But 
 they had received what M. Vacherot very rightly terms educa- 
 tion, as had also those ancient and illustrious families of the 
 Noailles, the Choiseuls and the Polignacs, who, though of aristo- 
 cratic lineage, remained in an obscure position. 
 
 The Constituents of 1789 were also men of education ; and they 
 formed the grandest debating Assembly, the grandest Parlia- 
 mentary Assembly, perhaps, which the world has ever seen. It 
 has left deep and ineffaceable traces on the soil of France ; and 
 if the work it brought into existence has some defects of detail 
 which experience and time have already rectified or can hereafter 
 remedy, it will ever stand forth as the inauguration of the political 
 and social transformation of the whole of Europe. 
 
 How had these Constituents been elected ? Was it by universal 
 suffrage as practised in these days ? No. The body of voters 
 at that time could offer pledges of wisdom and sense, in a word, 
 the pledge of education, and this it can do no longer. In ad- 
 mitting that the evil does He in the institutions, — a matter we do 
 not here wish to examine into or discuss, — in admitting that it 
 belongs entirely to individuals, how shall we remedy it, how can 
 we impart to them the education they require ? Is not a large 
 propordon of the electoral body itself deprived of education ? 
 
 When all is said, universal suffrage does not always furnish an 
 enlightened, laborious, patriotic, and disinterested Parliament, 
 holding right opinions as to the general conduct of public busi- 
 ness, and more especially as to the Foreign poHcy best adapted to 
 the times and interests of the country. We have the proof of 
 this to hand. 
 
 It is evident that there is a category of electors who in ordinary 
 circumstances are incapable of making an enlightened choice, 
 incapable of distinguishing clearly between men of worth and 
 men totally unfit and unprepared for their representative post. 
 Then there are certain local influences which are not always 
 characterized by prudence, and whose capacity is far below 
 the level of their ambition. Lastly, when M. Vacherot will not 
 admit that the institutions are not answerable for the inferiority 
 of a Republican Parliament, how can he explain that those under 
 the Monarchy were so much superior to these latter ?
 
 Signs of Tunes. 33 
 
 IV. Truth Mutilated. 
 
 The " General " of Socialism in France, M. Louis Blanc,^ to ex- 
 cuse his absence from the banquet on Sept. 21st, at the Lake Saint 
 Fargeau (organized by a federation of the Radical and anti- 
 Opportunist Republicans of and around Paris), wrote a letter of 
 fraternal congratulations on the abolition of Kings and Queens. 
 
 We wish first to say a few words about this banquet. It was 
 held to celebrate the anniversary of the proclamation of the First 
 Republic in France, on Sept. 21st, 1792. This was the first act 
 of the National Convention, declaring the abolition of Royalty. 
 This was its prelude to the judicial assassination of King Louis 
 XVL, who was as yet only a prisoner in the tower of the 
 Temple ; soon he was to become a martyr, and to mount the 
 scaffold in the open space named after the Revolution. Men 
 should be reminded that Royalty had remained unassailed 
 throughout the Ages of Faith. Attempts against Kings have been 
 repeatedly made since the Renaissance only ; regicide inspired 
 the people with less horror from the day when Brutus and 
 Scevola were crowned with the martyr's heroic wreath. Charles 
 L, Mary Stuart, Henri III., Henri IV., Louis XVL, Marie- An- 
 tionette, and Madame Elizabeth, were the first holocausts to that 
 heathenish reaction. And in these days of ours have not at- 
 tempts to murder Royal Princes and heads of States become of so 
 frequent an occurrence that that most awful crime may very soon 
 rank among common offences in the eyes of the populace ? 
 
 It is singular, it is even instructive, that the anniversary of the 
 2 1 St of September should now be only celebrated by the anti- 
 Opportunists when the Third Republic is in part the work of M. 
 Gambetta, the leader of Opportunism. The six hundred guests of 
 both sexes at Saint Fargeau (where the private festivities con- 
 cluded with dancing, as did the ofl[icial festivities on July 14th 
 last), are therefore much more advanced than M. Gambetta, who 
 remains far behind them. 
 
 ^ M. Louis Blanc's death has occurred since we penned the last lines of this 
 Essay : he passed away at Cannes on the morning of December yth, at the age 
 of sixty-nine. This restless man will only be missed by the fierce Parisian 
 democracy who cling to the "red rag," 
 
 C
 
 34 The Royal Family of France. 
 
 Thus M. Gambetta, whose policy is frankly, bluntly, Jacobinical, 
 anti-religious, anti-Conservative, Radical, Montagnard, is out- 
 stripped by M. Louis Blanc, who no longer has adherents in the 
 Palais Bourbon, but who had fanatical followers in the mass of 
 the populace; and who, when he vanished from the public 
 stage, left behind him, first M. Clemenceau, next M. Guesde as 
 the official heirs of his revolutionary aspirations. 
 
 M. Louis Blanc considers the date of Sept. 21st, 1792, as the 
 most memorable of all those belonging to the Revolution, because 
 on that date., by the abolitioii of Royalty and the proclamation of 
 the Republic, it was saved from the Coalition of the Foreign 
 Princes whose accomplice the King of France was. This is a lie, 
 and a calumny ! History has by this time approved the severe 
 and solemn warnings of two most noble Frenchmen, MM. de 
 Malesherbes and de Seze, the King's counsel. 
 
 The complicity of Louis XVL with the Foreign Princes has 
 never been proved ; the contrary was proved at his trial. And 
 if his judges had been judges only, in spite of their demagogue 
 passions and their political calculations, they would not have 
 dared condemn him. But the brutal Barri^re with his tail of 
 rabid Montagnards had determined beforehand to be his execu- 
 tioners; and they delivered his head to Samson's knife that they 
 might cut off all means of retreat and compel themselves to 
 march ever forward on the blood-stained path they had chosen. 
 
 As a matter of fact, the unfortunate King Louis XVI. was the 
 innocent victim slain for the guilt of his ancestors. For this same 
 guilt Royalty became the plaything, an object of contempt and 
 distrust, the tool of the vile populace in France ; for the guilt of 
 their forefathers the Princes and Princesses of the Royal House 
 of France have had to fly for their lives and to thank the foreigner 
 for a shelter, nay, some for a tomb ! It is God's will. God curses 
 in this present world human institutions as well as human creatures 
 when by Him they are found undutiful : the next world in truth is 
 one of punishment or rewards for individuals. A bad King courts 
 a bad Aristocracy, and the bad examples of the nobles quickly 
 eat up through every class of society. 
 
 In speaking with such veneration of Sept. 21st, 1792, M. Louis 
 Blanc is silent about the 21st of January, May 3Tst, and October
 
 Signs of Times. 35 
 
 1 6th, 1793. Does he consider that these dates, which he 
 doubtlessly has purposely omitted, should be also reckoned 
 amongst the great dates of the Revolution ? It was Vergniaud 
 who presided at that terrible night sitting where the judges, with- 
 out warrant to summon him before them, sentenced Louis XVI. 
 to death. 
 
 A description of this gloomy sitting, taken from contemporary 
 accounts, should be read at the Bibliotheque Nationale (Paris) 
 in a book called Art de Verifier les Dates. The ballot remained 
 open for four-and-twenty hours. The voters, filled instinctively 
 with a sort of shame and terror at the thought of the monstrous 
 deed they were about to do, glided one by one and at long 
 intervals through the darkness into the hall of suffrage and 
 dropped their solitary vote into the urn. 
 
 When Vergniaud, in his turn, mounted the scaffold, Oct. 31st, 
 1793, he must have remembered with deep remorse the court 
 where he had sat as President and proclaimed the result of the 
 ballot : " Death without delay." He then certainly did not 
 exclaim that Sept. 21st, 1792 had saved the Revolution; he 
 must have told himself that the proclamation of the Republic had 
 ruined liberty. It had, in fact, been abolished with Royalty, it 
 had been beheaded with Louis XVI. 
 
 Liberty remained long suspended. Royalty, re-established on 
 April 6th, 18 14, restored it to France. The Charter of Louis 
 XVIII. contained the germ of the right government of the 
 country by itself. This germ was developed by the Charter of 
 August 7th, 1830. In the course of time, and under favourable 
 circumstances, it might have received further developments with- 
 out any danger to order. The catastrophe of February, 1848, 
 put a stop to the movement. 
 
 To-day order is threatened, liberty is outraged, and soon 
 perhaps the Opportunists, with their leader M. Gambetta, who did 
 not attend the banquet at Lake Saint Fargeau, from being perse- 
 cutors may become the persecuted, as befell the Girondists. They 
 will be persecuted by the modern Terrorists, who will not send 
 them to the guillotine, but who might possibly send them to La 
 Roquette as hostages. There is no need to say what the Com- 
 mune, which M. Guesde blames for not having broken into the
 
 36 The Royal Family of France. 
 
 Bank of France and burned the books of the Public Debt, does 
 with hostages. 
 
 The fate of Revolutionists, whose race has been perpetuated 
 since 1792 to the present day, and gives no promise of extinction, 
 has little interest for us. But before proscribing each other as in 
 the days of the Convention, they may again band together in 
 order to plunge France into anarchy and servitude. M. Duclerc 
 himself, if we may believe the provincial echoes, foresees this 
 danger. We are happy to see that Conservative and Liberal 
 Monarchists will not allow themselves to be thus oppressed. 
 
 V. War. 
 
 There is no need for alarm on account of this war-cry ! No 
 intention exists of invading the editor's office sword in hand and 
 pistol in belt. There is still less idea of rushing into the street 
 with loaded gun preceded and followed by cannons, as on March 
 i8th, 187 1, when the Communist federals thronged suddenly from 
 the heights of Montmartre down into the Place Vendome. 
 
 The King's followers have too much respect for the law, even 
 when it is inimical to their political and religious opinions, — and 
 even when (as at present) it imposes a godless education which 
 provokes civil war amongst the citizens, — to advocate revolt, to 
 stir up its minions to storm the Elysee palace. They leave 
 violent measures to Republicans. 
 
 The Republic in France has always been established by 
 violence. In 1792, it was the outcome of the 6th of October, 
 1789, and the loth of August, 1792 ; it was the fitting consecra- 
 tion of the massacres of the 2nd of September, in Paris, Versailles, 
 Orleans, Rheims, Meaux, Lyons : over 1430 being slaughtered 
 in Paris alone. In 1848, a pistol-shot fired in front of M. 
 Guizot's house, on February the 23rd, and followed by the 
 terrible days of June, announced the advent of the Second 
 Republic, sealed with the blood of over 1500 killed, seven of 
 whom were Generals in the army — the Second Republic, whose 
 President was Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, who, elected thanks 
 to the prestige of his uncle's name, had taken the following oath . 
 '* En presence de Dim et devant le pen pie /ran fa is, je jure de
 
 Signs of Times. 37 
 
 rester fidele d, la Republique et de defendre la Constitution^^ 
 Events from November 21st and December 2nd, 1852, up 
 to July 19th, 1870, have dearly proved to France the third 
 Napoleon's perjuries and villanous hypocrisy. "Harm hatch, 
 harm catch ! " The immediate cause of the Third Republic, was 
 indeed a national disaster for which it was not responsible. 
 But under the pretence of assisting its country in the hour of 
 danger, it finished and completed her defeat and ruin. 
 
 Ninety years have just passed since Republicanism first made 
 its fatal apparition in the kingdom of Philip-Augustus, St. Louis, 
 Francis I., Henry IV., and Louis XIV. Its work of ruin, blood 
 and hatred, is too well known. It murdered judicially a King 
 who was a political martyr, whatever the Rappel may say when 
 it praises Lakanal, not because the latter was a learned man, but 
 because he was a regicide^ 
 
 We admit that the First Republic had one title to glory, which 
 up to the present time the Third Republic cannot claim. It 
 possessed great Generals, such as Marceau, Kleber, Hoche, whose 
 brilliant genius could not be eclipsed even by that of General 
 Bonaparte. It therefore achieved military successes that in the 
 eyes of the historian have outbalanced the political crimes, the 
 blood-stained drama of the scaffold under the Convention, the 
 Saturnalian orgies of the corrupt Directory. 
 
 The Third Republic has nothing yet to place to its credit side 
 which can balance the sad memories of the disorders and crimes of 
 the Commune ; and it is to be feared that, like the First Republic, 
 its latter days will end in drivelling idiotcy. The French are 
 already in the thickest mire of the Directory, which may lead to 
 the decline of France and to her ruin. 
 
 This is what the Republican Voltaire declares will be. And 
 that this sinister prophecy may not be fulfilled, we know of but one 
 preventive, which is the revival of public opinion, the strenuous 
 efforts of the sensible partisans of Monarchy, whose assistance 
 
 ^ It reminds one of the remark of Dr. Livingstone, who, when he was asked 
 why the presence of missionaries was so distasteful to Europeans in Africa, 
 replied : "It is because they feel that the pure and holy lives of those good 
 men are a reproach to themselves and to their own mode of life on the con- 
 tinent."
 
 3:8 TJie Royal Family of France. 
 
 their chiefs should invite in a legal warfare. Many signs, pre- 
 cursors of evil days, show that France is drifting into a dangerous 
 position where, placed between an umbrageous and threatening 
 enemy without, and an anarchical demagogy or a Jacobin 
 dictatorship within, she may find no way of escape. 
 
 It is no longer a time for illusory optimism. The King's party 
 alone can once more save France from this despairing alternative, 
 by seizing the reins of government ; and it cannot accomplish 
 this without shock or commotion unless the majority vote for it. 
 The great electioneering struggles are still in the distance ; but 
 how can people better prepare for them than by striving to gain 
 partial and local victories ? 
 
 The senatorial voters of Finisterre offered a good example of 
 energy and patriotism to the whole Monarchical party the other 
 day, both their candidates being elected. Without delay Con- 
 servative and Liberal Monarchists must valiantly and boldly 
 unfurl the standard of Order and Liberty through the Monarchy, 
 and bear it onward and onward to triumphal victory. The defeat 
 of the Montagne will easily cause many to falter in their allegiance 
 to the Republic ! The success of the King's followers, on the 
 other hand, will restore courage and decision to the timorous and 
 the vacillating, in proving to them that "Where there's a will 
 there's a way." Let them only fear God and honour their King !
 
 III. 
 
 CURRENT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 
 
 The France of to-day has to be studied more in sorrow than 
 anger. It is not in the interests of a dull and uncertain Republic 
 that people may think it necessary to write ; Europe cannot help 
 seeing, and is not surprised to see, the impotent inaction of 
 France on the field of Foreign Politics. RepubHcs are doomed 
 in Monarchical Europe before they are hatched, and they cannot 
 escape their unavoidable fate ; and the Third Republic of French 
 Democrats, still lingering in 1882, is, on the one hand, kept 
 alive by the mutual distrust, the deep internal divisions and 
 secret rancour of Republicans, hating each other more than they 
 love France. On the other hand, it lives owing a good deal to 
 the thinness in the ranks of thoroughgoing patriots along the 
 Monarchical lines, of Frenchmen both practical and strong-minded, 
 of men manly, unworshippers of the rising " stars." Advanced 
 Liberals, Democrats, and ultra-Democrats compose the Republic 
 of France to-day ; and this France is represented by a Govern- 
 ment of fighting " patriots " whose sole " victories " to be recorded 
 by History will be a wide campaign of lock-picking, official bur- 
 glaries, and house-breaking, an intermittent warfare waged or 
 permitted against all religion, monasteries, crosses and good 
 people going to church.^ The whole political and parliamentary 
 vigour of those bombastic Nationalists only expands, it would 
 
 1 Lawyers like MM. Constans and Cazot trample under foot the Article 
 Fifth of their very Republican law of September 3rd, 1791, to rob so many 
 good and useful Clergymen and Sisters of Mercy of both their homes and 
 property. What a moral lesson to neighbouring countries ! These well may 
 forbid at home the importation of Republican institutions, from France at all 
 events. Republican "Liberie, Egalite, Fraternite " is a lie. The very idea 
 is ridiculous, and more amusing still is the advertisement of these words stuck 
 all over towns and villages in France.
 
 40 The Royal Family of France. 
 
 seem, where they discern weakness. The old good institutions 
 and monuments of past time, still keeping Frenchmen united in 
 mind and heart, are gradually and ruthlessly disappearing by the 
 decrees of babyish officials; and the social superiority and 
 refinement of the French nation are being replaced by a patent 
 corruption of morality and literature, manners and social tone. 
 Religion, with her devoted and unselfish ministers, missionaries, 
 Sisters, and Jesuit Fathers even, is good only abroad, in Tunis, 
 Madagascar, or the far East, where the inconsistent policy of 
 a Government helpless at home regards them as the pioneers of 
 French civilization ! 
 
 A sad picture of the Benedictine Abbey at Solesmes, illustrious 
 by so many literary reminiscences, is given by a correspondent from 
 Paris. The expelled clergy are lodging where they can in the 
 village, surrounded indeed by the love and respect of the people, 
 but doomed to watch their Abbey and Church left to the mercy of 
 only three gendarmes, who amuse themselves in rummaging all 
 over the building, playing the grand organ, and letting the grass and 
 fruit of the orchard rot away. In days gone by, it was a pleasure 
 to watch the peaceful inhabitants of those cloisters at work. 
 "Toihng at the cultivation of their vegetables, pruning their trees, 
 they recall the heroic ages, when the sons of St. Benedict cleared 
 the forests of Gaul and transplanted to Western soil the flowers of 
 science and poetry exiled from the East." Still more touching 
 are the memories of its great and learned Abbot, the famous Dom 
 Gueranger, whose glorious works fittingly adorn the shelves of our 
 best libraries in England. " And now thorns and briars have 
 covered the profaned earth, and silence reigns over the habita- 
 tion." These words might have been written in England in the 
 days of Henry VIII., and not in the midst of so-called civilized 
 France in the Nineteenth Century ! International Democracy 
 and Socialism are truly hard at work just now in rooting out in 
 all countries every vestige of chivalrous, generous, and cultivated 
 patriotism from the mind of younger men. Our own young men 
 are being set very bad and most iniquitous examples indeed ; and 
 it is impossible to disguise, and it is foolish to ignore, that if we fall 
 victims to the manifest attacks of Radical and anti-Monarchical 
 men, we shall have, in large measure, to blame ourselves for our
 
 Current History of France. 41 
 
 weak and unspirited conduct. Those men teach the younger 
 generation to despise all that makes a nation's history glorious, 
 all that was sacred and fertile and noble in its past, and by under- 
 mining all its reverence for old age, destroying its faith in the 
 present and its hope in the future. The " Path of Shame " 
 entered on in France by present Republicans is enough to cause 
 the very shadow of a semi-Napoleonic Gambetta to disappear 
 behind the woods of Ville d'Avray. 
 
 This inconsistency of the Republican so-called Politicians of 
 France, is a revolting sight for a Frenchman open to common- 
 sense and self-respect ; but surely it is a not less comical one for 
 foreigners. Meanwhile let us leave these Democrats and all birds 
 of the same feather now advancing in Paris to the care of MM. 
 Gambetta, Madier de Montjau, and Cl^menceau. "Qui vivra, 
 verra." No statesman, no Frenchman worthy of the name, could 
 contemplate gladly the sure consequences of such a policy ; and 
 such maniacs would quickly be sent, by Englishmen at all events, 
 to Coventry. 
 
 " Revenant \ nos moutons." — The historian is concerned with 
 the nation. Let us hope only that France may yet have the 
 power to raise herself from the shameful entanglements, at home 
 and abroad, into which she is forced daily by her weak and 
 incapable Government in the present. All non-excitable and non- 
 sensitive Frenchmen of influence in good society should give 
 up all fine declamations, and set to the more reasonable duty 
 of teaching their prejudiced (because ignorant) and thoughtless 
 countrymen, the duty of refuting and dissipating the untrue, 
 insulting, and outrageous teaching spread in the crowd by unfair, 
 impudent and unpatriotic writers. It is the sacred duty of 
 influential and experienced citizens in a land, it is their primary 
 and binding task, to lead public opinion to the restoration and 
 consecration of truth and justice, and vigorously to resist every 
 tyrannous and unjust legislation passed by ambitious men who, 
 deliberately and by dint of a mouldy policy, seduce the simple 
 faith of the good, trade upon the animal instincts of the lower 
 and least equitable classes of society, and selfishly sacrifice both 
 the present and future of their native country in order to impose 
 their intolerant, dishonest, immoral and repulsive opinions in the
 
 42 The Royal Family of France. 
 
 domains of either Religion, Politics, or Morals, forsooth causing 
 one to doubt whether Europe be a civiHzed world in truth. 
 
 Professor James Bryce, M. P., presiding at the fifth Annual 
 Meeting of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings 
 (June 9th, 1882), wisely maintained that we ought to cling with 
 the utmost tenacity to what reminds us of the past and enables 
 us to realize the historical continuity of our nation. A more true 
 and seasonable hint could not be given. Amidst the conflicting 
 attempts at social and economical Reforms to-day, the reasonable 
 counsel from the learned Professor should prove useful to younger 
 men, provided that we continue to see unshaken that disciplined 
 loyalty which to citizens of a free State is a perfectly secure 
 defence against the sinister designs, if such exist, of both social 
 and foreign foes. Young men should not remain indifferent aHke 
 to the principles in which they profess to believe and the interests 
 which they are taught to value ; they should show themselves 
 utterly able to understand the meaning which the warnings of 
 History convey. Political wisdom, industry and determination 
 are what our young men want ; and they are not called upon to 
 be supremely intelligent and able, so much as active and obedient. 
 Most of us belong to the great army of strugglers. For all that, 
 let us not drag on an aimless, helpless life, infinitely worse than 
 death. Let us not rust out i7i the purlieus of a dull existence^ 
 leading — in the main deservedly so — to insensibility and decrepi- 
 tude. In this era of fierce activity, young men generally do not 
 make a bad show, but they want more power. We live in an 
 age which requires of us that we should speak with absolute 
 frankness, and younger men should not misapprehend the diffi- 
 culties under which their elders labour when, whilst devoting 
 themselves to the public good, they serve as a butt for the shafts 
 of envy and ridicule from a despicable multitude actuated by 
 ignorance or bribes. 
 
 The present situation in Europe, and indeed in the whole 
 civilized world, requires that every good citizen should stand 
 resolutely forth, and not shelter himself in ambiguity: for half 
 truths are often whole errors and lies. Those who do not place 
 their trust in hypocrisy and injustice must say so distinctly. Let 
 us put aside ambiguity as to our own practice ; let us not admit
 
 Current History of France. 43 
 
 it from others. We would counsel our younger contemporaries 
 to have the courage of their opi?iions ; and when they stand up to 
 do batde for justice and truth against evil, let them come to the 
 front boldly. 
 
 The overwhelming responsibility of the future must be borne 
 by the rising generation ; this is a fact often insisted upon by 
 our elders. The organs of lying and injustice are bold enough 
 in their attacks : surely the least that can be required of our young 
 champions, is that we should courageously stand to our con- 
 victions, to our deeds, to our loyalty in all that concerns our God, 
 our Sovereign, our country \ that we should bow down in a true, 
 practical and united homage before benefits conferred and rights 
 acquired, before our Sovereign and Constitution ; that we should 
 uphold by word and deed the honour and the independence of 
 our fatherland. 
 
 The truthful writer is, in these days, more than ever a signal 
 for attack : his adversaries swoop down upon him in a body. He 
 no sooner appears on the stage than an opponent walks in at the 
 door, a second comes in at the window. Nevertheless, let us 
 young writers, speak what our souls dictate ; and let us ever wel- 
 come with respect the lively convictions springing* from the reli- 
 gious faith of good contemporaries : convictions which are not the 
 specious sophistry of passions, obstinacy, self-interest. Let us 
 too in our turn bear in mind that our adversaries may likewise 
 be acting in good faith ; in every Bedlam is there not some crack- 
 brained lunatic who is firmly convinced that he is the sun ? 
 
 Let us from time to time recall to mind, that a man is one of 
 a family, each family is part of society and that society forms the 
 State. Starting from the principle, — an ever-true one — that re- 
 ligious belief constitutes the State, society the family, and family 
 constitutes the individual, we must admit that when faith has 
 departed, individual moraHty becomes corrupt and baseness 
 invades the public mind from the cottage to the Throne. This 
 has been seen in all times, in all countries. When Athens list- 
 lessly strolled to the portico to listen to the philosophers, 
 Alexander was able to rivet her chains securely. When de- 
 generate Rome, weary of her gods, ceased to worship them, she 
 fell prostrate before the vile Heliogabalus. When the Empire of
 
 44 I^Ji^ Royal Family of France. 
 
 the East, given up to discussion and sophistry, centred its interest 
 in the schools, the Turk came, overthrew it, and cast it into 
 the Bosphorus. When the Reign of Terror throned itself on the 
 high altar of the cathedral of Paris, Notre-Dame, and in its im- 
 piety denounced Robespierre as " too devout," then the blood 
 of citizens was shed in torrents by fellow-citizens. To-day the 
 French Government believe in nothing, the administrators of 
 the Government believe in nothing, the Parliament with their 
 electors, most State-paid Professors and Schoolmasters with their 
 pupils, believe in nothing. What do and will all those become ? 
 Sycophants, servants, slaves ! Florian's Fable " Le Danseur de 
 Corde et le Balancier " will remind these of an old, but better 
 time that can be for France again, if they like. 
 
 To be fair, we gladly acknowledge that ignorance and prejudice 
 have to a large extent abated in the Lower Middle classes of 
 French society ; also that the social forces, which were at work 
 underground, unobserved and unchecked before the days of 'Svoe 
 and sorrow" of 1870-71, fortunately, are no longer hidden. They 
 can be confronted in the open, and must doubtless be mastered 
 and mercilessly strangled on the advent to power of a large grow- 
 ing generation of better, more energetic and practical young men, 
 whose ideas about patriotism and duty towards one's native land 
 should be taught them as a religion, but not as a lifeless and 
 impotent simulacrum of a cosmopolitan patriotism of the vaguest 
 character. Meanwhile, no one denies that great France, dis- 
 trusted as she is (seemingly the most restless branch of the 
 European family, and able to endure anything rather than a 
 quiet life), an essentially Conservative and religious country, has 
 lost, politically speaking, something of her old energy, dignity, 
 and popularity. It is, we believe, easy to see that much of 
 this springs from Republican ad7ninistrations. Much springs 
 from the immoderate talks and writings, the painfully intolerant 
 and narrow policy, and often no less ridiculous blunders of 
 advanced Liberals. This is so, but much more is really due 
 to the weakness of Republican executives. These administrations, 
 indeed, are responsible for the calamitous success of national 
 evils. But this anywhere, is the unavoidable outcome of the rule 
 of politically inexperienced adventurers. These have no right
 
 Current History of Fratice. 45 
 
 to their seat at the National Council Board, not even the right of 
 prescription; they are, — to put it mildly, — intruders, and they 
 know full well that they will have to slink away without any 
 notice to quit at some near date. Since they must make the best 
 of their short tenure of office, they live on courting their care- 
 less supporters, namely, the ignorant and heedless majority of 
 the human family, the grossly cheated victims of the universal 
 franchise, who are, knowing not the meaning of self-restraint, ever 
 ready to give up their citizenship and sell their vote in exchange 
 for LIBERTINISM and material gratifications. Yes ; from the 
 universal franchise, to-day, shamefully hawked about electoral 
 booths, spring the evils of contemporary France. Thanks to the 
 sentimental policy in the past of narrow-minded and obstinate 
 Conservatives, together with the to-day unchecked audacity of the 
 Demagogy, the French Monarchy has in turn been, since February 
 22, 1848, the prey to designing adventurers or unscrupulous 
 upstarts, a fair average of them belonging to the groups of the 
 Free-thought International Community. French Free-thinkers ! 
 Beings whose efforts are not only to expel all ideas of religion 
 and patriotism from their own schools, but will venture further 
 afield and insult the feelings of people of a different opinion. 
 Beings towards whose unmanly teaching, unreasonable writings, 
 and clamorous meetings Democratic Cabinets are known ever to 
 maintain a too "prudent" reserve, and in fact make common 
 cause with them sometimes. Such is the case indeed with MM. 
 Leon Gambetta (whom the enjoyment of power for some months 
 seems to have left more moderate, and apparently less " anti- 
 clerical"), Jules Ferry, and Paul Bert, with their pack of rabid 
 or disappointed political ^fruits sees " like Rochefort and Victor 
 Hugo. Englishmen of thought and taste, earnest reformers and 
 philanthropists, agree that the least said of such political allies 
 the better. Since every man's ambition is to be something when 
 short of being somebody, the fanatical — when not abusive — 
 Rochefort elected to be the mouthpiece of street mobs and the 
 leader of the French '• racaille," of social anarchists, bandits, in- 
 cendiaries, and assassins. His head-quarters are in Paris, but are 
 not the foreign branches, — those in England too, — branches of 
 the same scampish school, whether they be French, German, or
 
 46 The Royal Family of France. 
 
 Russian ? As to Victor Hugo, in politics as much as in literature 
 he has forfeited the confidence of his countrymen, barring those 
 who do not respect God. Victor Hugo is as much of a political 
 turn-coat as of a literary one. He prostituted his loyalty and 
 gratitude to his King and Royal benefactors in order to obtain 
 a temporary prominence under the Republic, changeable France 
 apparently forgetting the " Grand Old Man's " Conservative Mani- 
 festo of former days : ''^Lhistoire des hovwies ne presente de poesie 
 que j 21 gee du haut des idees monarchiqiies et des croyances religieuses.^^^ 
 On July 13th last, at the Hotel de Ville, the childish old man 
 was replying in the following words to the toast of the Chairman 
 of the Paris Municipal Corporation : ^^Jtdy i^th, is Paris striking 
 Royalty f It is the setting at liberty of men J' 'O ij/€vSo)fji6Tr]<; \ 
 His was a wasted trouble, he too failed because he is no states- 
 man, no philosopher. Moreover, the Republic, like anybody else 
 (this is a logical conclusion), only takes servants of tried fealty. 
 
 ^ We ventured to say that Victor Hugo is a literary turn-coat. In litera- 
 ture, V. Hugo, until sixty-four years old, was the popular literary man of 
 France. He is a renowned veteran in the republic of letters, the father of 
 the "sweet lyric song" in modern France, undoubtedly a poet of great and 
 original genius. Decidedly the primary consideration of so eminent a genius 
 and leader should have been the respect, at least, of the feeling of France, an 
 essentially religious and Conservative land. Proud and impatient, thirsting for 
 a vast but fleeting popularity, he rushed headlong into the ranks of those he 
 dares to call now his "admirable and generous French people." Regardless 
 of the hopes, faith and love which had endeared him to France in earlier years, 
 and which — as they are to the present Poet Laureate of England — were more 
 than enough to have made his old age beautiful and dignified, the grey-headed 
 old man, tossed upon the black wave of Revolutions, sullied his fame by bringing 
 forth books which only live to swell the torrent of iniquity, and to effect the 
 downfall of many a promising, fair and guileless youth, abroad as well as in 
 France. One understands human frailty ; one pities any fallen man ; but one 
 wonders at the double baseness of a man who betrays both his political and 
 literary colours, drawing upon himself contempt and rejection from his country- 
 men. Most Frenchmen, indeed, are good citizens and pious Christian people, 
 and possess national pride and self-respect enough to judge their masters from 
 the higher stand-point of truth and morality as much as of loyalty and honesty. 
 With Englishmen not conversant with French people and French things, we may 
 fairly concede that Frenchmen seem the most restless members of the European 
 family ; but Frenchmen, apparently, can endure anything rather than a quiet 
 life, and besides, French news, as generally told to ordinary Englishmen, is the 
 echo of the smallest, most grovelling, and most low-toned portion of the French 
 Press, of the organs of the " gentlemen of the road."
 
 Current History of France. 47 
 
 Let us accept France as she stands now, that is, as the tool 
 of wealthy parvenus, respectable stock-jobbers, and a meek 
 bourgeoisie on the one hand, and of romantic Monarchists, un- 
 reasonable Radicals, and a considerable majority of ignorant or 
 interested small shopkeepers, licensed victuallers, and peasants 
 on the other side. These are the two most potent antagonists to 
 political exertion in the right direction. 
 
 The civic education of a nation is no light task, and a most 
 anxious one it is for her natural leaders, who should be the men 
 of higher position and education in the land. But less so-called 
 prudent reserve, m.ore promptitude and zeal all over France will 
 prove the most important and influential weapon against internal 
 as well as external enemies. One of the commonest reproaches 
 to which French Conservatives are rightly subjected in England, 
 is their apathy to the promotion of the national welfare, grounded 
 upon what is their politique d' effaceme?it, or standing aloof fro?n the 
 electoral fields from political elections and provincial and com- 
 munal meetings. Such is the language not seldom employed, 
 both in conversation and in print, by the people in England who 
 really wish to be friendly to France, and for whose kind senti- 
 ments, plain, honest common sense dictates that Frenchmen 
 should not be ungrateful. Meanwhile, Frenchmen may venture 
 to remind us with all due respect as an absolutely true fact, that 
 Frenchinen of higher position and abilities have difficulties neither 
 few nor slight to overcome before reaching the classes they are 
 expected to lead: the rapprochement between classes of French 
 society since 1789 is undoubtedly improving in tone and feeling 
 to-day ; but the higher are still usually misunderstood and un- 
 justly judged by the Lower Middle classes. The semi-real and 
 semi-apparent vanity in the national character goes a long way to 
 explain the indifferent feelings of men for o?te another. So far so 
 good. But with regard to the rest, the accusation of non-activity, 
 so strongly levelled against contemporary Monarchists in France, 
 is true, nevertheless, and honest. It is sufficient to read and see 
 that the present political conduct of Monarchists is hostile to 
 political freedom, preventing all growth, and nearly destroying all 
 vitality in Conservative politics. The Historian's duty is, not to 
 exhort only, but to act in the same spirit which guided his elders,
 
 48 The Royal Family of France. 
 
 and to stand upon the great, pure and unassailable lessons ot 
 History. If men stand by them manfully and work for them 
 vigorously, the time may come, nay, it will come, when renewed 
 power and lasting life will further the ends of justice. Men are 
 surely not expected deliberately to doom themselves to death and, 
 under the leadership of Forlorn Hope and Despair, to give it tip^ 
 with a resolution worthy of a modern fakir ! ! ! The talismanic 
 word " reaction " is now being sounded throughout France, and 
 nine out of ten educated Englishmen do not know who alone 
 can be the lawful Sovereign of France. Wherefore, we deter- 
 mined, without any pretension to political education or position, 
 to take advantage of the present revival in historical explorations 
 and political expeditions to rebuke the strange phenomenon of 
 ignorant or prejudiced countrymen of ours with testimonies certain 
 and proofs to which no man may add and from which no man 
 may take away, unless falling under the accusations of disreput- 
 able sectarianism and unmanly partisanship. From the principles 
 with their effects as laid down in this Essay, it will be easily seen 
 that on this side of the Channel every true and sensible English- 
 man is in duty bound to stand by Mr. Newdegate, the Parlia- 
 mentary Representative for North Warwick, and to oppose all 
 shades and fancies of Bradlaughism, simply on the ground that 
 they represent in England the worst and most dangerous prin- 
 ciples of French Revolutions and French Republics.
 
 IV. 
 
 THE ROYAL FAMILY OF FRANCE. 
 
 Not many months ago, a man^ devoid of the fear of God, and 
 standing in dread of pistol-shot and horsewhip, dared insult 
 his Royal Highness the Duke d'Aumale's august family, the 
 Royal House of France.- Taking up his pen. Prince Henry de 
 Valori, aide-de-camp to General d'Azemar, reviewed the acts of 
 the Second Imperial Administration, pointing to the following 
 facts : — 
 
 We scarcely realize that after the Crimean War, undertaken to 
 diminish the power of Russia, this Power in ten years has in 
 the East reached the British frontiers, and is threatening the 
 
 ^ Prince Napoleon (Jerome). 
 
 2 The language used by Prince Napoleon with regard to j^he Bourbon and 
 Orleans families led to the publication soon afterwards of a pamphlet called, 
 ''Lcttre sur VHistoire de France, adressce au Prince Napoleon'" by the Duke 
 d'Aumale, which produced a great sensation in Paris, where it was not sup- 
 pressed until it had obtained a large circulation. The hrocJmre was damaging 
 to the Napoleonic party, not less from the facts which it recalled, than from 
 the singular ability with which they were applied. It was known to have 
 caused the Emperor the greatest uneasiness. In a letter from a well-informed 
 authority, among the Prince's papers, it is said that at a meeting of his 
 Council, which had been called to consider what course should be taken in 
 regard to it, the Emperor stopped the Ministers when they spoke of it as a 
 tissue of falsehoods and exaggerations. "No, gentlemen," he said, with great 
 firmness ; * ' it is not so. Nobody knows the truth so well as I do, and there 
 is but one calumny in the letter, and that is the accusation against me —that, 
 while my mother was asking protection of Louis Philippe, I was conspiring 
 against him with some of the chiefs of the Republican party. In fact, I was 
 ill in bed with a bad sore throat. Louis Philippe's reception of my mother 
 was that of a father receiving his child. He folded his arm round her, and 
 promised to do all he could for her and hers ; and when she returned to my 
 bedside, her face was still wet with the tears which she had shed." The 
 Emperor, through his secretary, M. Mocquard, published a few days after- 
 wards an explicit denial of the Duke d'Aumale's accusations.— 7a/&^;z /;w« 
 the ''Life of H.R.H. the Prince Consort;' by Sir T. Martin, K.C.B. 
 
 49 D
 
 50 The Royal Family of France. 
 
 possessions of England in India ; that in the West it has anni- 
 hilated Poland ; and lastly that, in America, it has, together with 
 Prussia, concluded a triple alliance, the greatest danger that has 
 threatened Europe since the invasion of the barbarians. 
 
 With regard to European Powers. Trampling under foot the 
 traditions of politics, the first principles of practical politics, un- 
 mindful of the lessons taught by the past, and of attempts that 
 have all miscarried, European Powers have welcomed Italian 
 Unity, the introduction into their circle of a State containing 
 twenty-five millions of people. 
 
 The Mexican Expedition of 1862 was undertaken without first 
 treating with the Southern States ; worse still, fighting troops were 
 recalled at the mere beck of the United States (March 15, 1867). 
 
 Handing over the Latin race to the House of Savoy, General 
 Prim was allowed to offer Queen Isabella's Spain to the Duke 
 of Genoa. 
 
 Lastly, the King of Prussia was able in less than eight days to 
 put an end to the German Confederation, to drive Austria out 
 of Italy and Germany, to double his hereditary States ; and, after 
 many a bloody game, in which Prince von Bismarck had secured 
 all the trumps, other European nations find themselves without a 
 single card to-day. 
 
 The present theory of political '''■ laissez faire'' induces dreams. 
 When reduced to practice, it makes men giddy. Fortunately 
 neither the most cunning brain, nor soldiers, nor barracks, nor 
 steel guns, nor countless files, nor iron ships, will ever for one 
 moment defer the appointed hour of Providence : 
 
 *' The sword of heaven is not in haste to smite, 
 Nor yet doth linger." 
 
 A considerable majority of men at these times in high official 
 posts might mock and jeer, and ask whether our words are those 
 of an inspired descendant of Jeremiah. Unfortunately, they are 
 not ; yet the hour of Providence never fails to come ; and 
 cowardice clothed in fine raiment, and turpitude disguised in 
 the cloak of dignity oft have to decamp. Prince Napoleon, for 
 example, left the Crimea on the plea of ill-health ; and refused, 
 to the disgust of the army, the challenge of the Duke d'Aumale,
 
 The Royal Family of France. 5 1 
 
 on whose family he had heaped scurrilous abuse. He has been 
 successively a Democrat, Republican, Imperial Prince, with the 
 features of a Bonaparte and the heart of a Robespierre. 
 
 Caught in the midst of prosperity undreamed of, the Napoleonic 
 Dynasty fell of its own accord into an abyss of blood and shame, 
 dragging France down with it. That wonderful military star 
 which arose at Areola and Rivoli and shone on the fields of 
 Marengo and Austerlitz to set at Sedan ; that great nation, 
 as the French dearlv loved to be called, defeated, disgraced, dis- 
 armed in six months ; that French army, oft victorious, even 
 when hampered by the carelessness and incapacity of its Officers ; 
 that army that took Sebastopol, unconscious how the feat was 
 achieved, and fought its way into Pekin and Mexico with its eyes 
 shut ; this same army was laid not long ago low, and decimated 
 without truce or mercy. Surely all this cannot be called the 
 natural order of political events. It is the sign of Providential 
 times. More fearful changes and the most awful of lessons are 
 in store still for younger people. Lheure est a Dieu I 
 
 In this Paper, we purpose inquiring into the causes of this 
 long series of calamities succeeding each other during the last 
 thirty years of French History. Their cause once ascertained, 
 we must then discover a remedy for a disease fast becoming 
 chronic, and threatening the very life of Monarchical nations. 
 We write for the great phalanx of thinkers and enlightened 
 readers. And in addressing men of feeling and understanding, 
 one feels certain of being heard with attention. But should we, in 
 studying the political situation, allow some words of blame to fall 
 from our pen, we do not, however, wish to use any other language 
 than that of respect and conciliation. " Amidst the ruins of the 
 past and the uncertainty of the future I have always followed the 
 leading of one compass : moderation. Instinct, nature, educa- 
 tion had revealed it to me before my reason taught it to me. 
 There is no more mighty power in the State than the energy ot 
 moderation." This is the truly judicious remark made by a public 
 character, Vicomte de la Gueronniere, a daily wrestler, a searcher 
 for ideas, the builder of his own fame, the ardent defender of 
 truth and justice, one of the few writers of modern France whose 
 pen is ever frank, clear, and brilliant.
 
 V. 
 
 COVENANT. 
 
 France has doubtless played a great part in the history ot 
 humanity. The French nation has had a great share in the work 
 of civihzation, in social progress. Amongst European peoples, 
 the people of France have left a very deep, a very luminous 
 track across tlie path of History. 
 
 In the design of Providence, France has been in her turn, and 
 still is, a much favoured people out of those chosen by foreknow- 
 ledge in word and event, chosen by the goodness of their mis- 
 sion, chosen by the greatness of their deeds ; peoples to whose 
 career surely no glory has been wanting, because of their con- 
 stant belief both in God and justice, the refusal of which has 
 been the greatest mistake in those of them who have been found 
 wanting. 
 
 See the Jewish nation, for instance. Refusing to believe in 
 prophecy, the Jews have become themselves a living prophecy. 
 Handed down to the scorn of History, they have dragged on 
 century after century a mutilated existence, their dispersed 
 members ever sighing after a hopeless re-establishment. Pagan 
 Rome is no more than the "lone mother of dead empires." 
 Sixteen centuries ago its Eternal Empire crumbled to dust. A 
 Cross above its ruined temples and Coliseums indicates the cause 
 of its fall. 
 
 A large share of the inheritance both of the Jewish nation and 
 Rome has been entrusted to France. To take heed for the 
 morrow, we need only remember yesterday and reflect on to-day. 
 Let us ask ourselves, therefore, why a most noble, mighty, illus- 
 trious nation in the world has fallen beneath a foreign foe as 
 lately as in 1870, has become and still is a prey to demagogues ; 
 and how from standing erect, fear-inspiring, unparalleled amongst
 
 Covenant. 55 
 
 nations, she has seen herself in danger of annihilation between 
 the cross-fire of German entrenchments and the barricades of her 
 own rebel sons. 
 
 Let us with stout hearts study the Past. " He who would 
 judge well concerning the future," Bossuet wrote for his Royal 
 Pupil's instruction, " must diligently consult the past." Let us 
 look and see whether the French have not wandered or been led 
 astray ; that, if so, they should once more prevent so painful a 
 degradation. The future is still theirs, and Frenchmen can, if 
 they will, save themselves as others do. 
 
 " Christ Jesus ! whom Clotilde declares is the Son of the living 
 God ; Thou who, they say, givest help to those in peril and victory 
 to those that trust in Thy Name, I invoke with fervour Thy 
 glorious aid. If through Thee I vanquish my enemies, I will 
 believe in Thee and I will be baptized ; for, I have prayed to my 
 gods, I have proved them, they have refused to help me." Clovis, 
 to seal the Covenant of victory and immortality, erected a Cross. 
 This has been for fourteen centuries the guiding star of the 
 grandeur of France. This, reader, is the Covenant, a part of the 
 heritage of the Jews and the Romans, bequeathed to the ancestors 
 of the Comte de Chambord and the Royal Family of France. 
 This is the starting-point of that French Monarchy which sprang 
 from a rightly understood divine and iiational appointmeiit^ Christ, 
 victory, liberty; not from that liberty which, bred in the mire of 
 errors and Revolutions, turns into licence and ruins, but from that 
 liberty bred in the morality of the Gospel. 
 
 Faith, Law, Liberty : these are the constitutional elements of 
 French Conservatism; together with the hereditary succession 
 required by the Frank nation from the conditions of the Treaty 
 accepted by their ancestors. It is the observance of this both by 
 King and people that made France what she was. 
 
 This historical Covenant between faith and greatness may pro- 
 voke a smile of scorn from those worshippers of success achieved, 
 of the faits accomplis and the beati possidentes, who, intoxicated 
 with the triumph of current semi-Napoleonic and semi-Repub- 
 lican gamblers, are proud of the series of victories won by men 
 ruling without God, the soul, or Religion. They ask with gentle 
 irony whether the Cross prevented the French defeat at Crecy,
 
 54 'TJie Royal Family of France. 
 
 Poitiers, Agincourt ? We reply, that the Cross does not guarantee 
 success in the affairs of this world, any more than it preserves 
 the fighting hero from the musket-shot. Could doubt disturb the 
 mind of any who believe in a God, the Saviour of society as well 
 as the Saviour of individuals, they have only to enumerate the 
 disasters that have befallen France since September 21st, 1792; 
 they are as many as befell France during fourteen centuries ot 
 Monarchical sway. Surely the Free Thinkers of 1882, just as 
 the Dictators of Bordeaux, in lending their countenance to infamy 
 and ruin, cannot lay the blame thereof on the Christ whom they 
 ignore. 
 
 But, men who seek Him find Him in all the glorious eras ot 
 national History, in the ages of the might of a country, whether 
 military or intellectual. He is hidden from the nation during 
 misfortunes, defeats, revolutions. 
 
 We state our own belief, the result of our studies, we do not 
 teach. The Unbeliever and Atheist are free to criticize facts 
 which they cannot deny. The eminent Philosopher d'Alembert 
 says : " There is a bond whose power is greater than any other, 
 and to which the whole of Europe to the present day is indebted 
 for the fellowship existing among its States. This bond is Chris- 
 tianity. Despised at its birth, it offered a shelter to the very 
 caluminators who had so cruelly and so vainly persecuted it. Some 
 advanced thinkers, as they wished to be styled, declare that 
 Christianity is a restraint ; this is a confession of their inability to 
 bear the virtuous yoke which it imposes. They declare it to be 
 noxious ; this is to ignore those very evident and indispensable 
 advantages which it confers on society. They assert its duties 
 interfere with those of a citizen ; this is manifestly to calumniate 
 it, since one of its first precepts is, that each must fulfil the duties 
 of his state of life. They pretend it countenances despotism, the 
 arbitrary authority of Princes ; this is to misunderstand its spirit, 
 since it declares in the most powerful language that at the judg- 
 ment-seat of God Kings shall be judged more rigorously than 
 other men, and that they will have to redeem at a great price 
 the impunity they have enjoyed on earth. The faith exacted by 
 Christianity — they say — contradicts and humbles reason ; it is 
 insulting both to experience and to reason to consider as humili-
 
 Covenant, 5 5 
 
 ating a yoke which affords support to a reason ever wavering and 
 restless when left to itself. What would become of the world 
 and of its inhabitants if Religion, with its sweet consolations, its 
 excellent promises, the inestimable compensations it offers to the 
 wretched, did not soothe the inevitable woes which oppress each 
 individual and especially the wealthy ! It is in the inequality 
 of States, the uncertain portioning of honour and reward, that 
 Religion reveals the charm of its empire and the wisdom of its 
 laws, that temper and compensate as much as possible for human 
 sorrows. Religion alone can transform suffering ; it alone can 
 make us feel that wretchedness is a lesser evil than to taste of 
 the sweetness of life to the detriment of our conscience and our 
 duty. It alone can raise man out of himself and, so to speak, 
 enable him to abstract himself from ill-treatment, persecution, 
 iniquity, and take shelter under its auspices in a centre of happiness 
 and peace, beyond the touch of all misfortune." 
 
 Is it now true that Religion shackles the human mind, the 
 power of thinking ? Such an accusation is a very serious one, 
 and in order to weigh it let us search also into History. Descartes 
 was the deepest thinker of modern times, and the liberator of 
 human thought. He laid down the principle of '•^ doubting^' not 
 in order to arrive at unbelief (for unbelief is the shoal that wrecks 
 human reason), but in order to attain " certainty " ; and in his 
 great work the "Treatise on Method," he loosened the bonds 
 which had oppressed the human intellect ; and yet it is indis- 
 putable that he remained a sincere and fervent Catholic. Did 
 CathoHcism hinder Bossuet, the Eagle of Meaux and the Dauphin's 
 tutor, from being one of the greatest thinkers, or Pascal one of 
 the most intrepid and daring ? Were not Newton and Kepler 
 earnest Christians ? Religion only withholds those from thinking 
 who are not capable of thinking. Let it not then be asserted 
 that Religion enthrals men's minds. The Right Hon. the good 
 Earl of Shaftesbury, lately addressing the British Conference of 
 the Young Men's Christian Association, said he wants an Empire 
 the governmeiit of which should be founded upon Religion^ the only 
 law of truth, liberty^ and justice^ — which, knowing its own right, 
 would respect the rights of others, and would continue to the end 
 of time to be a model to the nations, an example of moral govern-
 
 56 TJie Royal Family of France. 
 
 ment, a refuge for the oppressed and distressed, and a shelter from 
 the persecution of dominant empires and the imposture of selfish 
 leaders of political parties. To Christ's Church justly belongs 
 the honour of having sheltered the infancy and early maturity of 
 the human intellect and human governments. So much for the 
 moral side of the point at stake. 
 
 We spoke of a Covenant, of a contract made between the Crown 
 and Monarchy of France and the nation. A fact not difficult to 
 prove. The King is to guard the faith and liberty of his people ; 
 should his subjects infringe either, he is to recall them to their 
 compact. Should the King in his turn infringe the higher law 
 constituting his legitimacy, his subjects must confront him with 
 the law, the holy ark of the alliance between Ruler and Ruled. 
 From this mutual understanding did spring the great achievements 
 of the Middle Ages. 
 
 Crecy, Poictiers, are battle-fields sanctified by the imperish- 
 able renown of patriotism fighting for the very existence of 
 national liberties, of independence, nay of the very country itself, 
 against unauthorized invaders distinguished — according to the 
 just and popular Lord Brougham — only by empty ambition and 
 unwarrantable aggression. Just wars and especially wars success- 
 ful, usefully serve to raise the martial glory of a country to the 
 highest pitch. But are not the most direful miseries inflicted on 
 the conquered people thereby? Do not unjust wars perpetuate 
 for generations a spirit of hostility prolific of bloodshed between 
 nations, most injurious to the progress of liberty and civiliza- 
 tion ? 
 
 The moral mission of the Frank Monarchy was strengthened on 
 the field of Tours. Had it not been for Charles Martel, France 
 would never have existed, and Europe would have been overrun 
 by the Turk. The Crusades became organized : and in them 
 France acquired such fame, that in the East the Western nations 
 were all designated as Franks. The Royal Princes of P'rance 
 headed every succeeding war, from Hugh, Count de Vermandois, 
 to poor Charles VI., who, during a lucid interval, gave his enthu- 
 siastic approval to the last and most disastrous Crusade of Nico- 
 poHs, when the battle ended with the death of 20,000 Christians, 
 and as many wounded and prisoners. It is unnecessary here to
 
 Covenant. 57 
 
 recall the excellent memory of Louis IX., called St. Louis, the 
 worthy son of the noble Queen Blanche de Castille,^ the King, 
 faithful to his loyal Councillor and friend de Joinville, the good 
 ki?ig who died before Tunis ! But we might with advantage quote 
 the words of Philip Augustus at Bouvines — we shall find that they 
 echo the words of Clovis : '' All our hope, all our trust, are in God. 
 Sinful though we be, we are united to God. We may then rely 
 upon the mercy of the Lord, who, in spite of our sins, will give us 
 the victory over His enemies and ours." At these words the 
 French army asked the King's blessing, and he, raising his hand, 
 prayed for it. — I have no doubt I shall be forgiven for the 
 quotation of the words of Lord Raglan's French colleague at the 
 battle of Alma, Marshal St.-Arnaud, of whom Sainte-Beuve says, 
 that he was a man who wielded his pen as easily as he did his 
 sword, and who, whilst merely tracing a passing thought, is often 
 more successful in expression than are professional authors. 
 " In these great undertakings (war), my dear brother, you see 
 man stands for very little, his plans and projects for still less ; 
 God must give His approval and protection to them. I will do 
 my best, and God will do His will ; I neglect nothing that may 
 make the chances in my favour, but I know well that I am 
 steering across a sea strewn with shoals, and that each day I see 
 fresh ones rising out of the briny deep. God's will be done." 
 How much more lasting is the power of such words than the 
 red gleam of the blood of revolutionary upstarts ! 
 
 There is much, we think, that shows that the ancestors of 
 modern Frenchmen were grand and admirable in deeds as well as 
 in words. To comment upon their conduct would be, as in the 
 
 ^ The Daughter of Alphonse IX., King of Castille, and Eleanor of England. 
 Born in 1187, she married Prince Louis, afterwards Louis VIIL, and with the 
 aid of the Connetable de Montmorency, upheld the rights of her son, Louis 
 IX., after he had become an orphan and during his absence in Palestine. 
 Blanche de Castille was equally remarkable for her personal charms as for the 
 firmness and sagacity she displayed towards a troublous nobility who had risen 
 in war against her during the minority of her son. She died in 1252, deeply 
 deplored by her people, to whom she had been a distinguished ruler and 
 charitable Queen, and between whom and herself the most loyal attachment 
 existed, doubtless that same loyal feeling with which Her Majesty Queen 
 Victoria is regarded by her subjects throughout the length and breadth of the 
 British Empire.
 
 58 TJie Royal Family of France. 
 
 case of the inspired writers, to weaken the eloquence of the text 
 and the power of its imagery. We have in the History of France 
 an incident that is even more imposing, more wonderful, and 
 quite a propos in reference to current French and Italian Politics ; 
 we think it may be put before the consideration of men who profess 
 to be drawing their rule of doctrine and practice, as from a well 
 pure and undefiled, from the living power of truth and justice : 
 " No glory can rival that of Pepin the Short and Charlemagne, 
 establishing the Temporal Kingdom or Power of the Papacy, to 
 secure the liberty of the Popes, of the Church, and of Christians." 
 Constitutionally and wisely the destinies of the Papacy and of 
 France have been from that time forward indissolubly joined. 
 The Throne of France ever reflected the brilliancy of the Pope's 
 triple crown ; but on the other hand History forcibly shows that 
 the shadows of the Vatican darkened the sunshine of the Tuileries. 
 
 We are writing History ; we do not seek to pretend to the 
 mantle of the prophet. But if any one can point to a single page 
 in French History in which the prosperity of France coincides 
 with the oppression of the Holy See, we will throw up our thesis: 
 German unity and Italian unity achieved simultaneously, to the 
 prejudice of European Powers and the Papacy; the captivity of 
 Pope Pius IX. and the final spoliation of the Papal States, con- 
 summated on the very day when France lay stricken in her 
 capital ; the disastrous phases of the rule of the two Bonapartes 
 and the demagogic Republicans, tallying day for day with the 
 outrages inflicted on Rome ; such a collection of facts is too 
 striking, too full of instruction, too eloquent, to require further 
 words of ours. 
 
 Henry IV. imagined that he could violate the Catholic Laws 
 of his Kingdom, and separate himself from the Church of France : 
 France would not accept him as a King. Henry asked to be 
 instructed in the truths of the Cathchc religion, and on July 25th, 
 1593, kneeling in the BasiUca of Saint Denis, his hand on the 
 Holy Bible, he declared : " I swear as did my forefathers, in 
 presence of the Most Holy One, to live and die for the Catholic, 
 Apostohc and Roman religion ; — to defend it and protect it 
 everywhere, at the peril of my blood and of my life." We do not 
 discuss Theology here : we merely prove the intimate and necessary
 
 Covenant. 59 
 
 union of France and the Papacy from facts and custom. One 
 excuse only may be granted Henri IV. for his dull and bigoted 
 policy in issuing the silly Edict of Nantes (1598). Henri IV. 
 thought it right that legislators must respect the fears and 
 resentments of the people, and his bigotry agreed too well with 
 the religious hatred and political distrust which prevailed among 
 the bulk of the French people. The King's dragonnades, fruitful 
 only in atrocious violences, caused to France the irreparable loss 
 of a hundred thousand families, who, after living peaceably and 
 obedient to the Government and distinguishing themselves by the 
 purity of their morals and their active industry, escaped from 
 France, and transferred their industry to England, Germany, and 
 Holland. This dark hour of French History in justice must most 
 indisputably be laid at Henri IV.'s door. 
 
 Throughout the lapse of centuries extending from Clovis to 
 Louis XVI. we find age by age proofs of this triple alliance I have 
 referred to between the Church, the King and the Nation. This 
 Covenant was at one time set aside by the Revolution. Hatred 
 to God fostered hatred to King and nation : King and people 
 ])erished on the scafibld, and with them perished the old French 
 liberty. A corrupt society gave birlh to Voltaire ^nd the false 
 Philosophers. This liberty, a daughter of heaven, the watchful 
 guardian of the nation's Covenant, should not be forsaken and 
 allowed to be swept away in the whirlwind of French Revolutions. 
 Some day she will arise and, though not in our lifetime perhaps, 
 save France, disgraced by the memorable Revolution, which 
 began on July 14th, 1789, that day when the TrpwToi {}/ev8os of the 
 nineteenth century was uttered.
 
 VI. 
 
 LEGITIMACY, OR RIGHT. 
 
 "■ Legitimacy," wrote the eminent French statesman Royer Col- 
 lard, " is the grandest and most fruitful idea ever conceived by 
 modern nations. It is a living representative of individual right, 
 the noble inheritance of humanity, of which, if we are once de- 
 prived, nothing more remains to us on earth. Legitimacy belongs 
 to us more than to any other nation, because no other Royal 
 Family possesses it as wholly and as fully as the Royal Family of 
 France does." 
 
 M. Guizot said : " Hereditary right and legitimacy must exist 
 everywhere, that society may be permanent and authority duly 
 exercised. The heredity of thrones has no other aim than to 
 place right on the throne, that so it may exist everywhere. A 
 legitimate King cannot be made, any more than can a free people. 
 The idea and the feeling of right, which is the true principle of 
 the institution in both cases, and is its motive power, cannot 
 permeate it throughout in a day. All things in their origin are 
 the product of violence, and violence distorts them even whilst 
 creating them. The essence of right is sullied and defaced by 
 the action of the unruly passions of violence. Time must take it 
 in hand, free it, and foster it, cleanse it from the coarse alloy 
 which error and violence have mingled with it, till at last it stands 
 forth brilliant and pure. 
 
 When, therefore, a true legitimate rule is available,, one whose 
 claims are the result of centuries, and which, though suspended, 
 have yet never been destroyed ; when this legitimate rule has 
 been and is ready again to become the institution I have spoken 
 of, it would surely be a singular folly not to welcome it, not to 
 strive earnestly to realize all the advantages it offers, instead of 
 setting oneself the task of remaking what already exists, of en-
 
 Legitimacy, oj' Right. 6 1 
 
 countering a thousand perils in recreating for the benefit of the 
 future that which can be preserved and adapted to the present. 
 
 Firmly convinced that the legitimacy of Thrones is an excellent 
 institution, and that to be an institution such legitimacy must be 
 of ancient date — otherwise it is not one — I ask myself : " What 
 disastrous blindness can lead the Revolution to ignore or refuse 
 such a benefit ? " 
 
 Pasquier said : " Liberty has no surer, no holier, no more 
 inviolable guarantee in France than the Royal Family. Legiti- 
 macy is the natural order of things ; it accepts no other forms 
 than such as are true ; once accepted, it respects them." " There 
 is something more worthy of respect than crowd, genius, glory of 
 war; and this is Right" (Thiers). 
 
 Yes. Legitimacy is undying, and this is the reason why the 
 Royal Family of France has reigned for centuries ; that it has 
 been restored six times ; that it has survived terrific crises ; and 
 that the friends of France together with Europe are convinced 
 that a fusion between the two branches of the Royal Family 
 would assure the political and social future of that country and 
 give more rest to other nations. 
 
 In a certain section of the political world — and more so than 
 anywhere else among the new nobility created by Napoleon — it 
 is usual to speak of a Monarchical Restoration as a chimerical 
 idea, and to proclaim that the best chances have long been 
 shipwrecked on the rocks of Frohsdorf; in fact, the younger 
 generation of Englishmen, whether in their Public Schools or 
 without, only hear of Imperial and RepubHcan families in France, 
 and are told that no French Royal Family exists. Men hope 
 by this to widen the breach between parties, to deepen the 
 trench that divides them. Such an event, they also say, as a 
 Monarchical Restoration never happens twice. It has already 
 happened six times ! Revolutions are not novelties in the 
 world, still less are family discords. Let us look at home and 
 turn over the pages of our own History of England ! As early as 
 the time of Saint Louis, the powerful subjects of his kingdom, in 
 open rebellion, wished to overthrow the government of Blanche 
 de Castille and hand over the French Crown to the Sire de Coucy. 
 A nobility whose duty it was to defend the Throne, now turned
 
 62 The Royal Family of France. 
 
 its weapons and its courage against the Royal child, supported by 
 England, who sought to derive advantage from these civic struggles. 
 Later on, we find Stephen Marcel leagued with a Prince of the 
 Royal Blood who coveted the Throne, unscrupulously stirring up 
 the inhabitants of Paris against their legitimate King in the name 
 of Demagogispt, that infernal cry of furious factionists who ever 
 and everywhere pander to the vicious tastes of the vile multitude 
 and to popular prejudices. He reigned for a short time, upheld 
 by violence, till terror gave place to the curses of the people 
 whom he had deceived and seduced. 
 
 This reminds one of Mirabeau's reflections upon the "people " 
 as he then, speaking from his seat in Parliament, was turned round 
 and rebuked the demagogues in a language which was worthy of 
 his name as the French Demosthenes: "It is strange that men 
 united together in pursuit of the same aim, animated by the same 
 indestructible longing, and who should be drawn more tightly 
 together by the most determined opposition, should, misled by a 
 singular mania, a deplorable blindness, fall foul of each other. 
 Men, who thus replace their devotion to their country by the 
 susceptibility of self-love^ are ever ready to betray each other to 
 popular prejudice ! A few days ago men sought to carry me 
 in triumph, and now they hawk through the streets with loud 
 cries : The great Treason of Miraheaii ! 
 
 " I did not need this lesson to feel convinced that there was but 
 a step from the Capitol to the Tarpeian Rock, Yet, the man 
 who fights for right reason, for his country, does not readily 
 acknowledge himself defeated. He who is conscious of having 
 deserved well of his country and knows that he can still serve it ; 
 he who is not sated by an ephemeral celebrity and who despises 
 the fame of a day for the sake of true glory ; he who wishes to 
 speak the truth and to work for the welfare of the State, irre- 
 spective of fickle public opinion ; such a man bears within himself 
 the reward of his deeds, the charm of his sufferings, the price of 
 his dangers. He must leave his harvest, his future destiny, which 
 is that of his reputation, to the care of time, the incorruptible 
 judge who renders justice to all men." 
 
 In 1426 all seemed lost : a woman, Joan of Arc, defeats the 
 English, takes the lawful heir, Charles VII., by the hand, leads
 
 Legitimacy, or Right. ^3 
 
 him to the throne, July 17th, 1429, and vanishes with the crown 
 of martyrdom on her brow. 
 
 " Is this kingdom to fall ? Is this glorious land, the fairest the 
 sun shines on, to be kept in bondage? Are we never again to 
 have a King of our own, a Sovereign sprung from the soil ? Shall 
 our country no more possess a King that never dies ! " (Schiller : 
 The Maiden of Orleajis.) At this period the law was powerless, 
 all classes, divided against each other, no longer acknowledged a 
 legitimate Government. In the midst of the general confusion 
 and anarchy violence alone could make itself heard. 
 
 However, after many lapses, the French rally once more, rise 
 from their degradation, are ashamed of their fetters : all the sup- 
 porters and sympathizers of the Monarchy draw together again ; 
 and their union was made closer and stronger, thanks to the 
 national energy. The re-establishment of Charles VII. on the 
 throne of his ancestors was the work of the nation. In this 
 violent crisis. Royalty, as it were, recruited itself from its own sub- 
 stance, as do those robust constitutions which throw off of them- 
 selves unhealthy humours and regain all the vigour of their 
 natural strength. On the death of Henry III., stabbed to the 
 heart with a dagger by the friar James Clement, at Saint Cloud, 
 the League organizes and countenances rebellion, to prevent the 
 accession of Henry IV., the Heir Apparent to the Throne of 
 France. The Leaguers, headed by Mayenne, spare nothing to 
 perpetuate their usurpation — secret meetings, a sworn covenant, 
 civil war, murder, barricades, foreign aid, perpetual abeyance of 
 the Royal Family. Could anything more be done ? 
 
 The storm disperses, Henry IV. re-enters Paris, after the battles 
 of Arques and Ivry, a conqueror and peacemaker. On the battle- 
 field of Ivry were uttered by the King these beautiful and famous 
 words, speaking with so irresistible a force to the minds and 
 hearts of Frenchmen: ^'- Enfants, si vous perdez vos enseignes, 
 ralliez-vous a mon panache blanc ; vous le trouverez toujours au 
 chemin de Vhonneur et de la gloire ! '' — 
 
 The Fronde, with its retinue of conspirators, meets with no better 
 success than did the League : princes, nobles, citizens murderous 
 and witty, great in riots and sonnets, carry on a war of musketeers 
 and alguazils. A paltry revolution without cause, without means,
 
 64 The Royal Family of France. 
 
 without dignity, and without result. A ridiculous preface to the 
 grandest reign in the History of France, to that unrivalled era 
 which saw the French victorious on land and sea in fifty battles ; 
 the Pyrenees opened to make way for its Royal Princes ; the 
 annexation of Flanders, Strasburg, and Alsace ; which gave birth 
 to Bossuet and Fenelon, to Racine and Corneille, to Boileau and 
 Moliere, to Conde and Turenne, to Duquesne and Tourville ; 
 which saw created its ports, its roads, its fortifications, and wit- 
 nessed the building of Versailles and the Louvre ; and which, in 
 spite of the mischances which are apt to befall all greatness in 
 this world, arrested the foreigner at the gates of Denain, defeated 
 him by the valour of French officers and the heroism of their 
 King, supported by Marshal de Villars, and closed with victory 
 an age whose brilliancy eclipses that of Francis I. and Leo X. 
 
 The memorable Revolution of 1793, the most terrible among 
 the revolutions of Europe, testifies still more strongly to the 
 exclusive and imperative incapacity of French innovators and 
 political adventurers, whose shadowy training, jealous sentiments, 
 and '* swashbuckler " traditions constitute what to-day's French- 
 men call a Republican policy, and which they put forward 
 once more and try to filter into the popular imagination. On 
 October i6th, 1789, the National Assembly decrees that the title 
 of the King of France shall be changed to that of the King oj 
 the French ; and, the National Convention having opened on Sep- 
 tember 17th, 1792, Royalty falls on the 21st, abolished by a 
 decree, and the Bourbon Family, perpetually banished (December 
 20th), King Louis XVL, Queen Marie-Antoinette, and the Royal 
 Family confined in the Temple excepted. Who then could oppose 
 these horrible regenerators in their work of blood and crime ? 
 When they have killed and assassinated to their heart's content, 
 when they have cleansed prisons, palaces, and seminaries, instead 
 of raising a lasting monument to their Republic, they end by 
 sending each other to pay their dues to the executioner. Lastly, 
 instead of their Kingly father, whom they sent to the scaffold, 
 they accept a new master, a military despot, a tyrant ! In truth, 
 Burke in England had seen clearly the inevitable and prosely- 
 tizing course of French Revolutionists, and eloquently declared 
 it in his manifesto, *' Reflections on the French Revolution," and
 
 Legitimacy, or Right. 65 
 
 went even so far as to sever his friendship of years with Fox, who, 
 on May 6th, 1791, was speaking in high praise of the Revo- 
 lutionary Constitution. 
 
 France was then depopulated. There remained only widows 
 and orphans ; trade and manufactures were ruined. French 
 liberty was confiscated ; much of the glory of war was hers, but 
 with a policy that may be characterized as insane and gambling. 
 Such was this first Napoleonic orgie which victory cannot justify ; 
 the march from Cadiz to Moscow, from Thabor to Antwerp, 
 strewing the road with the wounded and the dead, cannot be 
 balanced even by the creation of an Empire which vanished in a 
 quarter of an hour, only leaving an onerous and awkward tradition 
 behind. Skill and luck had served him in his early career. He 
 would tempt Providence and dared presume he always could 
 expect the same advantages, because the magnates of all lands 
 bowed before him as if he were Pharaoh. " Events are in the 
 saddle and they ride mankind." The realities of life fought against 
 Bonaparte's enthusiastic rashness, and the French of to-day are 
 not more Imperialist than they are Catholic. Man is great in his 
 likeness to God only when he creates, that is, when he makes 
 something out of what is insignificant ; and when frofti the hundred 
 and twenty counties of 18 12 he leaves nothing but a bronze 
 column, a depopulated country, ruined and robbed of the frontiers 
 it formerly possessed, such a man may be a great leader, a suc- 
 cessful soldier, but History will not style him a great king nor a 
 clever poHtician. Then comes one of those despicable praetorian 
 revolutions held up to scorn by Tacitus. The first Bonaparte 
 thought to save his dynasty in reviving Jacobinism. The bloody 
 spectre could protect neither uncle nor nephew, nor even that 
 heroic, virtuous, generous and good young man who fell in a 
 gallant struggle, single-handed, against a band of Zulu warriors, 
 the enemies of his English home ! Unhappy child, offspring of 
 that marvellous adventure that wedded a soldier to the daughter 
 of the Caesars, and whose fate is, after the National misfortunes 
 of 1870-71, the most strange amongst all these extraordinary 
 events. We are not stating this as our opinion, but we may be 
 allowed to say that he might, and most likely would, have done 
 great things for France; but France has never been an easy nation to 
 
 E
 
 66 The Royal Family of France. 
 
 govern, while she has been signally wanting in the power of governifig 
 herself. We only pity the masses of the peasantry — poor people 
 with traditions of serfage in their veins, the prey to the rottenness 
 of audacious quacks who pilfer from their electors' pockets while 
 parading before the eyes of the latter the " cloud-compelling " 
 Bismarck and the " standing menace " of Metz. Hence her 
 history is a continuous series of reactions, every one of which has 
 brought new trials and presented fresh problems to be solved by 
 her rulers. Comfort will be found for the exiled, widowed and 
 childless mother (one of the most afflicted personages in modern 
 history) that through the undying hatreds, painful jealousies, and 
 rivalries between Frenchmen, the present times of anxious politics 
 and international disquietude, should her son have been recalled to 
 France, he would have met with a heritage of thorns only, of which 
 the honour and glory might have been brilliant, but the burden 
 could not be light, nor, in all probability, the possession lasting. 
 
 After the Reign of Terror, of Absolutism, of tempest, the barque 
 of Robert the Strong and of Saint Louis rode into port for the 
 sixth time: "The French nation freely call to the Throne of 
 France Louis-Stanislas-Xavier of France, brother to the last King, 
 and after him the other members of the House of Bourbon, ac- 
 cording to the former rule " (Senatus-consultum of April 6th, 1814). 
 
 We have now reached 181 5 ; these great lessons should surely 
 be turned to account. More enlightened as to their rights and as 
 to their failings by the shortcomings of their forefathers, French- 
 men should have honoured their memory by making use of their 
 experience. Benjamin Constant, a Tribune during Napoleon's 
 consulship, said once : " We must study the future by looking 
 back on the past, and drawing from it lessons of wisdom." The 
 wicked ever prove far more logical, and will only engage men of 
 a tried fealty in their ranks. 
 
 What is the moral of these terrible upheavings of the State, 
 followed by beneficent Restorations ? What do we always find 
 hovering above the Revolutionary gulfs ? The Royal Family and 
 the legitimate Monarchy of France, to-day represented by the law- 
 ful King of the French nation and the sole rightful Sovereign, 
 Henry V., Duke de Bordeaux and Count de Chambord. Henry V. 
 (born September 29th, 1820) is the only son of the Duke de Berry
 
 Legitimacy, or Right. 6j 
 
 and Princess Caroline of Naples, the grandson of Charles X- (Count 
 d'Artois) and great nephew of the unfortunate monarch Louis XVI. 
 The sole reproach, not unexpectedly flung by anti-monarchical 
 men at the head of this Royal Prince, is the ever-new one flung at 
 the head of every Royal Prince deserving the name of such. Henri 
 V.'s crime can be none other but to have been well educated, and 
 to have kept faithful to the duties of man towards his God, his 
 fellow-countrymen and his native land : in short, Henri V. is the 
 very scai-ecrow of self-seeking adventurers, of men of duplicity and 
 dissimulation : in short, of either ignorant or arrogant men who.n 
 it** pays "to believe and to make others believe in falsehoods. 
 His mother, gentle and pious-hearted — nay, are the Royal 
 Princesses of France known to have proved ever otherwise? — 
 had ever watched over him in all outward changes, assiduously 
 keeping human pieties and good aff"ections alive in her Royal 
 son. Our words doubtless may sound harsh to the ears of men 
 whose motto is : virtus post nuimnos ! However, truth ever 
 finds a high-born heart ready to stand by champions of religion 
 and patriotism. 
 
 The Heir Apparent is Louis Philippe's grandson, viz., the 
 Count de Paris (born in 1838), eldest son of the Duke d'Orl^ans 
 (run away with by his horses and killed in jumping from his 
 carriage at Neuilly, July 13th, 1842)^ and Princess Helena of 
 Mecklenburg-Schwerin.2 The brother to the Comte de Paris is 
 the Duke de Chartres (born in 1842), Colonel commanding the 
 1 2th Regiment of Chasseurs (cavalry) now stationed at Rouen. 
 Lieutenant-General H.R.H. the Duke d'Aumale is the uncle to 
 these Princes of the Royal Blood of France. (Read " Genea- 
 logical Tables," p. 14.) 
 
 Providence placed the destiny of France in the hands of this 
 Royal Family, and no one has the right to abrogate that succession. 
 Unless Royalty and Monarchy, under the present system of morality 
 prevalent now, more than ever, in democratic Parliaments and 
 
 ^ Her Majesty Queen Victoria, in one of her letters to her uncle (King 
 Leopold of Belgium) at the time of this terrible misfortune, exclaims : "Perhaps 
 poor Chartres is saved great sorrow and grief. Him we must not pity." 
 
 ^ The eldest son of the Comte de Paris is H.R.H. Prince Louis Philippe, 
 Duke d'Orleans, at present a pupil of the College Stanislas (Paris).
 
 6S The Royal Family of France. 
 
 among sets of wild teachers and harsh zealots all over Europe, 
 means a family of Punchinellos glittering with gold embroidery 
 and of feathered Judies paid for their services rendered in enliven- 
 ing the local trade of some used-up mart, or in performing before 
 a swarm of aristocrats and plutocrats as white as powder and 
 pomatum can make them ? God forbid Royalty and monarchy 
 ever came down to that ! 
 
 Now it is an universally acknowledged fact that the French 
 nation has never initiated a revolution by its o-vvn impulse. Every 
 one knows that Louis le Debonnaire, Charles, surnamed the Bald, 
 Charles le Gros, and Charles the Simple were deposed by the 
 powerful nobles of the kingdom, and not by the people. We 
 know that it was not the people who wished to raise Coucy to the 
 throne of Saint Louis ; — that it was a prince of the Royal Blood 
 who strove to usurp the throne of John the Good during his cap- 
 tivity in London ; — that it was a Duke of Burgundy who recalled 
 the English to France ; — that the Guises wished to rob Henry III. 
 and Henry IV. of the crown in order to place it on their own 
 brows. We also know that it was Ann Maria Louise d'Orl^ans, 
 best known as Mademoiselle de Montpensier, who had the bold- 
 ness to order the guns to be fired from the Bastille upon the 
 troops of Louis XIV. All these revolutions were bred and fer- 
 mented at Paris by unauthorized assemblies, or by meetings of the 
 riotous riff-raff of the capital of France, as in all countries, reck- 
 less mobs, recalling to Englishmen the evil days of 1848 in the 
 north of England, so ably and quickly squashed by Sir Robert 
 Peel ; — mobs bent on the gratification of selfish or vindictive 
 passions, and ever instigated by desperate leaders and secret 
 societies prompt to turn to profit the confusion of popular excite- 
 ment, and ready at a moment's notice to tear down all existing 
 institutions for the purpose of re-casting them in moulds of their 
 own devising ; whose action is, like that of French Republicans, 
 mistaken for the movement of the nation, and deliberately daring 
 to take into their hands the destinies of a country, wholly un- 
 practised as they are in the science of government and committed 
 to doctrines subversive of society. 
 
 " Paris," writes an old historian, " contains big heaps of * ver- 
 mine ' and ' fripouille,' a large number of discontented, ambitious
 
 Legitimacy, or Right. 69 
 
 and idle men, ever on the scent for better times, ever ready 
 to oppose Law and to overthrow liberty, wicked, perverse, and 
 perjured men." "The age that witnessed the fall of Monarchy," 
 wrote the illustrious M. Guizot, " saw its resurrection. The men 
 who overthrew it restored it ; the powers it condemned had been 
 absorbed into it ; it gives to social life in the past and in the future 
 that breadth and stability which are so essentially necessary to our 
 age." All the experience of the last three or four years is of 
 service to understand the inactivity and retirement of French 
 Republicans who have tasted the " sweets " of office. They are 
 behaving in an amazingly prudent manner now ! 
 
 A few weeks ago, in the form of a Letter to the notorious advo- 
 cate of marriage divorce for French people, Alexandre Dumas fits 
 explained to M. Naquet his reasons for not adhering to the 
 Republic. He ^^ prefers to remain independent^' (we regret A. 
 Dumas' indifference), but "confesses a decided leaning towards 
 a constitutional monarchy, which in England has produced many 
 great statesmen; whereas, with the exception of the honoured 
 Lazare Nicholas Carnot, the three Republics have seen none." 
 Dumas wittily argues with full truth, that " when one man rules 
 he can be kept in order ; but when all are kings; what is to be 
 done with them if they prove restive ? Universal franchise has 
 to be flattered like a Sovereign, for Sovereign it is, only it is a 
 Sovereign with millions of arms, a stomach, no head, and a crown 
 on. It is something like a crab with a sidelong action." 
 
 Stability in social and political life is all the more needful when 
 we consider that the foundation of new dynasties upheaves with 
 violence and agitation, with awful struggles and loss of life the 
 age in which they occur. It is only by the struggle between 
 opposite interests or rival ambitions that the stronger or the 
 cleverer leader ends by compelHng submission; and it is only 
 when this submission is given unanimously and voluntarily that 
 his authority is established. 
 
 From this universally-felt need sprung the principle of succession 
 to the Throne, to see a Sovereign on the Throne '-''par son droit'' 
 This principle is a natural development, it could not but exist. 
 The conviction as to its utility caused it to be adopted. It has 
 taken the name of genuine, lawful succession, or legitimacy.
 
 70 The Royal Family of France. 
 
 Legitimacy therefore was established for the benefit of nations, 
 not for that of a Royal Family. It acquires power and brilliancy 
 in proportion as its personification in the Royal Family becomes 
 ancient ; men honour that which is consecrated by the hand of 
 Time. Prayer becomes more easily recollected in a temple whose 
 vaulted roof is darkened by the lapse of centuries, than in the 
 light and brilliant edifices of modern construction. The countless 
 generations who have knelt in the same spot, have uttered the same 
 words, have taken the same oaths, have wept the same tears, have 
 rejoiced in the same hope, add the force of example to the power 
 of precept. Time thus transforms the act of reason, which founded 
 legitimacy, into a feeling of affection, gratitude and respect.
 
 VII. 
 
 BOURBONS, 
 
 The House of Bourbon descends from Robert the Strong, Duke 
 de France, whose Hneage can be distinctly traced through ten 
 degrees up to Clodion, or Clodius the Hairy, supposed son of 
 Pharamond. No doubt can be thrown on this statement The 
 Charta of 799, discovered by M. de Vilevieille, proves it clearly. 
 Then the principle of hereditary right of succession to the Throne, 
 instead of being controverted, was re-established by the elevation 
 of Hugh Capet to the Throne. 
 
 The political vicissitudes of France are strong proofs how 
 deeply Monarchical customs are rooted in the French soil, since 
 during nine centuries the Crown has been hereditary " by an 
 established custom," writes T. Bignon, " which is stronger than the 
 law itself, this custom being engraved, not on marble or brass, 
 but in the history and hearts of Frenchmen." The principle of 
 Royalty is so powerful in France that during the space of fourteen 
 centuries the French nation has had but three Races of Kings. 
 France should have remained and should again be " the Christian 
 Monarchy." Current History shows eloquently enough, that since 
 the Monarchical principle has been violated in France, all other 
 thrones have been trembling ; the European balance is destroyed, 
 lesser States vanish one after the other, power falls into the cleverest 
 hands, rights are trodden underfoot by brutal violence, the scales 
 of justice are replaced by the soldier's sword, the majesty of 
 Royalty seems tarnished throughout the world. When France 
 rises from her degradation and the Revolution in Europe is slain, 
 then only European princes will resume their stability, and thrones 
 regain their lustre. Putting aside all sentimental dislike to the 
 brutal frankness of facts, who has not read in History that on the 
 day on which Louis XIV, expired, men in Germany did exclaim :
 
 72 The Royal Family of France. 
 
 " The King is dead ! " and this King was the King of France. 
 Chateaubriand wrote : *' If France possessed nothing but her 
 Royal Family, whose dignity surprises us, yet might we excel in 
 fame." 
 
 There is a Royal Family of France, reader, a Royal Family as 
 old as the Gaelic soil, as ancient as the forests of Germany, 
 as truly of the Royal Blood of France as Her Majesty Queen 
 Victoria I. descends from Egbert. It took root in France, and 
 France, to repay her debt, embodied herself in her Royal Family. 
 The sword of Caesar had become the battle-axe of Tolbiac, and 
 the labarum of Constantine the oriflamme of St. Denys. France 
 not in a small degree forwarded during fourteen centuries the 
 development of intellectual, political, social, and Christian excel- 
 lences. She contributed her large, nay — we said so before — 
 mighty, share in the impetus given to civilization, liberty and 
 franchise; loyalty has borrowed her name. As " the Christian 
 nation " in Europe, France was styled the " Eldest Daughter of 
 the Church," because she created the Temporal Power of the Holy 
 See as she created the Domain of the Franks. She drove the 
 Saracens out of the West of Europe and evangelized Germany. 
 Have not Princes of the Royal House of France fought with the 
 Cross on their arm at Ptolemais and at Mansourah ? Have they 
 not decreed justice beneath an oak, and have they not died at 
 the stake ? They fought at Bouvines and at Marignan, at Crecy 
 and at Poictiers. History knows not whether to extol their 
 signal victories or their triumphant defeats. Thirty-two Princes 
 of the Royal Family have been killed on the battle-field since 
 the time of St. Louis . . . six a century ! They formed the 
 religion, the laws, the customs, the arts of their country, to-day 
 carefully rejected (nor is the reason far to seek), as antiquated 
 absurdities by poHtical farceurs. From the Atlas to the Scheldt, 
 from the banks of the Jordan to the shores of the St. Lawrence, 
 from Pondicherry to Constantinople, the very frontiers of France, 
 her colonies and missions recall the names of the Royal Princes, 
 who ever appeared on the field from the day of the battle of 
 Tolbiac to that of the 22nd of December, 1847, and in more 
 recent days to that of 1870-71. History tells us of the glorious 
 days of that country under Charlemagne, under Philip Augustus,
 
 Bourbons. y$ 
 
 St. Louis, Francis I., Henry IV., and Louis XIV., and the martyr- 
 King, Louis XVI., who laid his innocent head on the scaffold, 
 with hands bound behind, victim of his love for his people. 
 And contemporary history relates how at Constantine, at the 
 Smala, at St. John of Ulloa, at Patay, at Mans, these Princes 
 were not unworthy of the parent stem, when their Royal High- 
 nesses the Duke de Chartres and Prince de JoinVille fought for 
 their country in spite of the refusal of their proffered services by 
 the National Committee of September 4th, 1870. This Royal 
 Family is the Family of the French Princes lately in our midst 
 and still near us ; it is their own family, the family styled T/ie 
 House of France. (Read " Genealogical Tables," p. 14.) 
 
 Tell me, candid reader. Of the three Republics and of the 
 two Empires, what have their men done with this Royal Family, 
 their allies, their exchequer, their frontiers? They had full 
 power ; all that terror, military force, and gold could effect, was 
 given into their hands, was it not ? 
 
 The Royal Princes ? They have slaughtered them, with their 
 wives, their sisters, their children. The Duke d'Enghien : a 
 lantern was tied to his breast to direct the aim of his executioners. 
 The Duke de Berry : they despatched him with a dagger. 
 
 The people ? They drowned them wholesale, and shot them 
 down in columns. Maidens and youths they stripped and cast 
 into the Loire ; and when the graves at the Brotteaux were 
 over-full with old men and children, these were sunk lower down 
 with the points of swords. They killed thousands of people by 
 the knife, and a million soldiers in senseless wars. 
 
 The aUies of France? All Europe was armed against her, 
 terrified as it was at her revolutionary doctrines and her covetous- 
 ness. People and King have been trodden under foot ; neither 
 the Royal Arms nor the old national escutcheon found and still 
 find favour in their eyes. They would have overthrown and 
 levelled all things, even the tiara, the sign of France's greatness, 
 and the Cross, the symbol of human liberty. They imprisoned 
 and insulted the Holy Father ; later they betrayed him after the 
 fashion of Judas. They sowed hatred, they have reaped and are 
 reaping of the same. Prussia in the north, Savoy in the south, 
 Russia in the east, the United States in the Western Hemisphere,
 
 74 The Royal Family of France. 
 
 are all instruments in the hand of Providence for the teaching of 
 modern nations. 
 
 The Exchequer of France ? The three Republics and the two 
 Empires have cost France fifty-five thousand millions up to 
 1871 only! Under Napoleon III. alone loans were allowed to 
 the Government : March, 1854, to the extent of 250 miUions 
 (850 milHons 'had been tendered to them); in July, 1855, of 
 750 millons (3,652 millions were tendered); in 1859, of 
 500 milHons (2,500 millions having been tendered); in 1864, 
 of 300 millions (over 2,000 millions were tendered), etc. ; and 
 who now will doubt that Prince Bismack had become by 1867 
 infernally covetous of the French gold for his poor people ? At 
 present the fact that half the kingdom stands mortgaged con- 
 fronts any man who may care to undertake the burden of the 
 French administration. 
 
 The frontiers? All have vanished. Trafalgar and Aboukir, 
 Leipzig and Waterloo, Queretaro and Sedan ; the Capitulation of 
 Paris, the disasters of Mans and Pontarlier: these form the 
 schedule of their achievements. Yet, in 1870, when Napoleon 
 III. was again bending under the weight of popular disaffection, 
 the sum of 373 millions was voted for the Army estimates for 
 that year, besides 3 millions for extraordinary expenditure ; and 
 without the calls made upon the exchequer of Algeria, 163 
 millions were voted for the naiy estimates^ besides over 10 millions 
 for extraordinary expenditure. 26,229,516 francs only were the 
 Educational vote ! Can one be surprised at the just anger and 
 maddening despair that decreed the last fall of the accursed star 
 of the Bonapartes ? Sit tibi terra levis /^ 
 
 ' The Prince Consort was writing to the King of Belgium from Windsor 
 Castle ( 1 8th January, 1859): ". . . The French nation is by no means 
 anxious for war. . . . The Bourse is an eloquent preacher for peace. 
 . . . I have just been reading in the Econoinist a very remarkable com- 
 pilation in reference to the French State Debts, which I extract, as it cannot 
 fail to interest you. It was in — 
 
 1814 50,600,000, 
 
 1830 177,000,000. 
 
 1851 213,800,000. 
 
 1858 336,880,000. 
 
 This speaks volumes ! "
 
 Bourbons. 75 
 
 Wretched Governments ! What have they done with the 
 splendour of the Monarchical inheritance of their country? In 
 any case History has the right of questioning the conspirators 
 of 1793 and of 181 2, the rebels famed for their barricades of 
 February, 1848, and the bandits of December, 185 1, the dema- 
 gogues of September, 1870, and March, 1871, dictators who 
 decreed victory and immortality to anarchy. Have not their 
 administrations ever been, and are they not at this hour, a source 
 of danger to all Europe? Have they been and are they the 
 government that Europe likes? All of them put together, let 
 them throw their claims into the scales and let truth and justice 
 weigh them ! 
 
 The diseases of the human mind are sometimes so intense that 
 the most skilful physician has to compound with them ; and when 
 it is clearly evident that the impulse is irresistible, the only thing 
 that can be done is to become its leader ; because it has been truly 
 said that nations do not reason, but they feel. The French more 
 than any other nation is governed by a spirit of contradiction ; 
 and no other nation could in truth outlive so contradictory notions 
 as those advocated in contemporary France about national patriot- 
 ism, law, conscience and international decorum. To a stranger 
 they look comical ; to Frenchmen they incite them to nought but 
 madness and spite against each other to gratify their native vanity. 
 The yoke of the French must be bitter yet brilliant, it must be 
 oppressive yet dazzling ; else will they despise their rulers and 
 thwart and resist every impetus lent it. We have declared that 
 the task of governing them has become difficult and next to im- 
 possible ; and all loyal attempts to benefit contemporary French- 
 men will meet with only saddening causes of irritation and des- 
 pondency, as lofig as anti- Christian with Republican policies are 
 not abandoned and new socialist and revolutionary ideas mercilessly 
 nipped in the bud. France must give herself the government that 
 Europe likes — a government Hke that of all the European States 
 — and Frenchmen must bear that in mind for the third time.
 
 VIII. 
 
 ORLEANISTS. 
 
 The Duke d'Aumale one day said : " If a great crime (the vote 
 of King Louis XVI. 's death by the infamous Philippe EgaHte, the 
 Duke d'Orleans) has been committed, it has been atoned for." 
 The nobleness of this avowal needs no praise of ours. We speak 
 of the present Orleans Family with all sincerity and affectionate 
 reverence. When the lacqueys and the hirelings of King Louis 
 Philippe's household renounced the service and the livery of their 
 master for another's pay, when they raised their voices to decree 
 the perpetual banishment of Louis Philippe and his family from 
 France, they simultaneously opened the gates of the kingdom full 
 wide before the man who, studying himself alone, capitulated 
 before Sedan on terms so shameful and degrading that Prince von 
 Bismarck could not help remarking : " Cet homme-ld a enterre 
 jusqu'a son oncle ! " But we promised to abstain from all rancour 
 and recrimination, the most worthless of arguments. 
 
 The mistaken idea conceived by the Orleans Family was, to 
 think that the destinies of a great country like France could start 
 afresh under new conditions, and that without risking utter and 
 irretrievable ruin. The history of the whole world does not offer 
 a single instance of the social re-establishment of a State which 
 by its own fault has lost its name and forsaken its traditions. 
 Greece, Assyria, Rome, Venice, Florence, Genoa, Poland, prove 
 this. The Revolution of 1688 in England misled King Louis 
 Philippe and later on Louis Bonaparte. Nevertheless there is 
 not the slightest analogy between the Constitutions of the two 
 countries, and still less between the temper of the two people. 
 Would to God that the Political Economy of England was that 
 of France ! For no one wishes more than we do, to see in 
 France that fusion of Princes and principle; to see the two 
 
 76
 
 Orleanists. Jf 
 
 Houses of Peers and Commoners striving only for the prosperity 
 of France ; to see the Sovereign reigning but not governing, the 
 King standing on high, aloof from the influence of popular passions. 
 
 The French are far from the goal. Indeed they can hardly see 
 it rising in the distance upon a path on which they have not yet 
 entered. On August 2nd, 1840, Charles X., then at Rambouillet, 
 had, with the Duke d'Angouleme, abdicated in favour of his 
 grandson, who was proclaimed King with the name of Henri V. 
 The day before, Louis Philippe (then Duke d'Orleans) had been 
 entrusted with both the Lieutenant-Generalship of the Kingdom 
 and the duty of seeing to the corofiation of Henri V. The bearer 
 of the Royal commands was the Viscount Latour-Foissac, whom 
 Louis PhiHppe declined to receive. We all know that Louis 
 Philippe's next disgraceful step was to send Odillon Barrot and 
 General Maison with three others to keep Charles X. out of the 
 way, thereby being himself enabled to have his ambition satisfied 
 in becoming ''King of the French" on August 9th, 1830. But 
 Louis Philippe, in substituting the title of "King of the French" 
 for that of " King of France," indicated his view of the revolution 
 which he had accepted ; this was going backward instead of 
 forward, and the attempt to perfect the Charta and individual 
 liberty took the nation back to Clovis and the Frank chieftains. 
 Every Frenchman and Paris Politicians know perfectly well as 
 we do, that a Sovereign, whatever his title, could not dispose of 
 France as of a patrimony belonging to him. Every one knows, 
 in these days, that France belongs to the French, as England to 
 the English and Prussia to the Prussians. Why then substitu^te 
 the tide of " King of the French " for that of " King of France " ? 
 How would " Queen of the English " affect an Englishman's ear, 
 instead of " Queen of England " ? Why go back, after so many 
 centuries, to a form belonging to an unciviHzed era? By a 
 singular paradox, the title was revived by Louis Philippe which 
 in its origin belonged to a conquest against which protestations 
 were made in the name of the Revolution (October i6th 1789). 
 
 And of the emblems of the Gauls the cock only was chosen. 
 This new Royal Standard, symbol of watchfulness, did not prevent 
 Louis PhiUppe's Ministers and Councillors from deceiving them- 
 selves. They were mere plagiarists of the men of 1789, in which
 
 y8 The Royal Family oj Fj-aiice. 
 
 epoch a social revolution occurred. The principle of equality 
 was supposed to be proclaimed ; the inhabitants of France were 
 supposed to become Frenchmen by a title in common. To give 
 a fresh sanction to this principle of equality, this new title was 
 understood to convey the idea that the King was in an equal 
 degree the King of every Frenchman. So people were made to 
 believe. 
 
 Did not this new title rather contain, however, a principle of 
 individual infeoffment ? This title inferred that every Frenchman 
 was individually placed towards the King in certain conditions of 
 obedience and duty, that an indirect, yet definite, relation existed 
 between every Frenchman and the King. When we read of this 
 title of " King of the French " proclaimed, we seem to hear the 
 clashing of swords on bucklers ; we seem to see again an armed 
 and savage multitude electing a chieftain to lead them forth to 
 conquer and gather in the spoils of all ancient civilization. To 
 come to current History, did we see the Queen of England part 
 with her homely and long-honoured title of " Queen " when as- 
 suming that of " Empress of India " to gratify the vanity of her 
 subjects in the East? 
 
 Thus in his first act, supposed to be an imitation of the English 
 Constitutional spirit, Louis Philippe made a mistake. His ensu- 
 ing acts were still more unlike it. The Established Church in 
 England had rallied round the new throne because of the analogy 
 of its origin and religious doctrine. The Church in France, 
 on the contrary, has never been, and could never be, in favour 
 of the principles which brought forth 1830; Louis Philippe never 
 had its support. Elected by the working classes, moreover, and 
 by the Lower Middle classes, he never had the votes of the 
 ancient aristocracy. 
 
 And yet the Orle'ans family bears the stamp of nobility. Wher- 
 ever glory led the way, there were to be found the Duke d'Orl^ans, 
 the Duke de Nemours, the Duke d'Aumale, the Prince de Join- 
 ville. Order and liberty prevailed under Louis Philippe's rule, 
 notwithstanding the eiTors incident to his unwarrantable accept- 
 ance of the Crown. It was an age of great oratorical warfare in 
 favour of liberty of faith, liberty for the clergy, liberty of teaching. 
 The policy of July was not always that of Louis XIV. ; but Louis
 
 Orieajtists, 79 
 
 Philippe did not allow French territory to be tampered with, and 
 he completed the conquest of Algeria. The awful events of 1848 
 found him willing to accept the decision of the country. He 
 might have opposed force by force, and have stirred up civil war : 
 he did not choose to do so. If the conduct of Charles X. at 
 Rambouillet was dictated by generosity, that of the Governor of 
 Algeria in 1848 was even more admirable. We shall have, 
 presently, to consider the attitude of the Orleans Princes in 
 relation to the Head of the House of Bourbon. Without pre- 
 judging the question, it is indisputable that their conduct, as 
 Frenchmen, has always been irreproachable and blameless. They 
 never plotted; unless, indeed, the Duke d'Aumale's short trips 
 on the frontier to challenge Prince Napoleon to a duel can be 
 construed as such ! 
 
 The misfortunes of France, the misfortunes of the Orleans 
 family have a secret cause. This secret cause transpired in 1848 ; 
 the twenty calamitous years which after that have bowed France 
 to the ground, have divulged it to all ages. This secret cause 
 is the violation of rights^ the neglect of principle. 
 
 We are not speaking here of what is termed the divine appoint- 
 ment ; in political matters, it is a paradox, not to sa)^ a blasphemy. 
 Divine right refers to creation ; God rested on the seventh day 
 after having exercised His power during the preceding six ; He 
 continues to exercise it till the end of time. In poHtics, we speak 
 of human rights. On this ground we can discuss the matter 
 without taking the Lord's Name in vain, without profanely and 
 insolently associating Him with the complicated results of our 
 pride. 
 
 I will designate this right (human), the violation of which has 
 for nearly a hundred years caused all our misfortunes, as the 
 social right of Royal Heirship. There are certain matters which, 
 though they regulate civilized society, are yet beyond the limits 
 of human discussion. This right is a mystery as is life, as is the 
 moral liberty of man. Yet, what is this liberty which we claim 
 as our most precious possession } Notwithstanding the con- 
 scious pride with which it inspires us, it is only the power of 
 error ; its greatness is due to its frailty. 
 
 The mystery of social right is not less- deep than is the mystery
 
 8o The Royal Family of France. 
 
 of liberty. It is of a different nature. Sovereignty in the order 
 of heirship is a law of the unavoidable ; and we must note well 
 that it applies to Monarchies as well as to Republics. Man, con- 
 sidered as one of a community, is subject to unavoidable laws. 
 If as an individual he is perfectly free, as a member of a com- 
 munity he is bound to live in subjection. He can neither choose 
 at his birth his nationality or religion nor the laws under the 
 power of which he is destined to live. All the acts of his Hfe are 
 governed by formalities to which he has never consented and 
 from which he cannot deliver himself. The aggregate of these 
 necessities compelling the submission of man constitutes the 
 principle of sovereignty ; by applying it to the life of nations we 
 derive its succession, a principle which governs men and societies, 
 a law belonging to the moral world and therefore beyond the 
 control of man. This is the law which has been misunderstood, 
 this the transgression against constitutional principles committed 
 by French society, entailing nearly a century of misfortune on 
 France. And in truth, if we consider the aspect of affairs 
 throughout Europe, does it not seem as though some gigantic 
 and universal design was being worked out against Constitutional 
 principles ? Even the mistakes so evident to all cannot account 
 for the simultaneous, similar, and rapid changes. Do not think 
 that it only needs a keener glance and a stronger hand to stay 
 the course of events. In relation to great public events, men 
 seem generally very insignificant ; but to-day all stand paralysed 
 before the irresistible : unprincipledness. 
 
 Unprincipledness : this is the disease. The remedy is known 
 to every one. A false situation has been brought about by events 
 and by the political mistakes of the Orleans family. The Orleans 
 family then must have the courage to withdraw, and to assist 
 France to escape from the chaos into which she is plunged.
 
 IX. 
 
 RECONCILIA TION. 
 
 We know of no word in any tongue more absurd, more revolting, 
 when applied to the reconciliation of Princes of the same blood, 
 than the term fusion. Silver and copper are mixed with gold, 
 and inversely ; this is fusion, or alloy. But gold does not fuse 
 with gold, it mingles with it, is identified with it. 
 
 A fusion, such as this, if dreamt of by the Paris bourgeois of 
 the Quartier Montmartre or those of the Chaussee d'Antin, would 
 be an abdication on both sides. It would be an acknowledgment 
 of two hostile principles there where only one exists, aggravated 
 as it is by the misfortunes of the period. Should the Royal 
 Princes have been induced to follow this traitorous path, it would 
 have inevitably led to a rupture. That rupture* would have 
 proved the closing scene of the History of France. There was 
 but one remedy for the unfathomable sum total of our misfortunes, 
 for the cruel trials of the present, for the sinister fears in the 
 future: a plain and simple reconciliation. Foolish or wicked 
 partisans may strive to compromise the safety of France by giving 
 vent to dangerous opinions, by provoking claims injurious to the 
 Royal dignity. Wretches as they are, that they should prove 
 more ambitious, more inexorable than their leaders, is not sur- 
 prising; they are time-serving friends. When in 1848 the Orleans 
 family went into exile, these men chose an opposite direction. 
 There is not to-day a single loyal and faithful Orleanist who would 
 speak otherwise than we do. No sensible and practical man 
 would ever sketch a programme of so absurd and risky a policy, 
 which even Louis Philippe himself disowned on his death-bed. 
 
 State reasons are imperative, and family questions — say these 
 policy-mongers — must give way to them. " How can we ask 
 Princes who have quarrelled violently with the Head of their 
 
 81 T7
 
 Sz The Royal Family of France. 
 
 family and their hereditary traditions to acknowledge that their 
 father was in fault, that they themselves are guilty ? " "And this, — 
 add they, — when the Head of the House of Bourbon is childless, 
 when, as regards the royal claim and the popular vote, all the 
 chances of the future are for the Orleans family. Why should 
 they disown the past ? " It is these blinded, narrow-minded men 
 who have raised the question of the flag, as though the Lilies 
 of France would blush for shame if embroidered on the banners 
 of Austerlitz, Isly, and Magenta ; as if the pennon that waved 
 at Rocroy and Fontenoy would in its turn disgrace the victors of 
 Marengo and Solferino. 
 
 But these extreme parties are not composed of would-be 
 Orleanists only; there are also the ne-plus-ultra Legitimists, a 
 faction whose loss would be a gain, who have learned nothing and 
 forgotten nothing. For them fusion would be a sacrilege ; they 
 would sooner become Republicans than acknowledge as Royal 
 Princes the descendants of Philippe Egalite. This cannot wound 
 the feelings of sensible men, it can only make them smile. 
 
 For, if we had to accept the decrees of Moses and to curse the 
 children unto the fourth generation for the sins of their fathers, 
 who would escape the anathema ? It would be better in such 
 circumstances to uproot the Cross of divine Mercy and adopt 
 circumcision. Let them then cast aside once for all such ora- 
 torical display as would be invidious to the memory of those who 
 have already appeared before the judgment-seat of Divine justice 
 and truth. Here below there are but two judges competent 
 to sit ; King Louis Philippe, father of the Orleans Princes, and 
 France. 
 
 The last words, the last advice of Louis Philippe at Claremont, 
 were words of peace and counsels of reconciliation. His su- 
 preme wish was that his sons should promise to acknowledge the 
 Comte de Chambord as Head of their House. " Let the Comte 
 de Cha7nbord be the Head of the House of Orleans I " 
 
 On October 19th, 1852, Louis Napoleon had convoked his 
 Senate for November, to deliberate on a change of Government, 
 when a senatus consultum, referring to the contemplated restora- 
 tion of the Empire, would be proposed for the ratification of the 
 French people; and on the 25th follow^ing was issued the Comte
 
 Reconciliation. 83 
 
 de Chambord's protest against the President's message. In the 
 autumn of 1853, November 20th, the Duke de Nemours paid a 
 visit to Frohsdorf and announced to his Royal Cousin the follow- 
 ing solemn declaration : that he came in his brother's name and 
 in his own, to assure the Comte de Chambord that he and his 
 brothers acknowledged but one Monarchy, represented by one 
 Royal Throne. Afterwards, certain conditions had been appended 
 to this solemn deed of adhesion by the Orleans Princes. Since 
 then recrimination has vanished and all doubt about that is use- 
 less. France was in her death-throes not long ago, and she is 
 threatened with more troubles. She must be saved. 
 
 This safety, — the safety of all, the safety of Princes as well as 
 ours, — they, the Orleans Princes, hold in their hands. Let them 
 listen to the voice of Providence, to the voice of their country, to 
 the voice of their father. Providence speaks to them by the woes 
 and sorrows of their agonizing country; from the wreck of the 
 Throne which God cast down at a sign. He tells them that pride 
 is an affront to His Divinity; that the towering wave breeds the 
 storm, and the uplifted mountain the frost and the snow. They 
 among Frenchmen who do not see signs of bloodsl^ed in the skies 
 must be wilfully Wind indeed ; and those who will not see them 
 and hold aloof, are guilty of treason. The day always comes 
 which may never return. It is not a question of turning back, 
 the Royal Princes must make a stand, and we rejoiced in reading 
 of their shortly intended visit to Frohsdorf. Were the Comte de 
 Chambord to die to-morrow, it would be too late. As the Royal 
 Sons of France, they knew full well that they can only preserve 
 their august tide by acknowledging the King of France. The 
 time may come — and it must come — when they will reign ; but 
 their reign would be ephemeral and born of the Revolution, their 
 dynasty would ever be its toy and slave. They would remain 
 wretched Pretenders, levelled to being confronted with other 
 pretenders. A Bonaparte or a Louis Napoleon will still exist, 
 and France, the unhappy victim of a political hydra for ever being 
 born again of blood, riots and Coups d'Etat, would fall by the 
 hand of a parricide. 
 
 Many, sacrilegiously, had relied on the sterility of the Royal 
 stem, as though the God who dried the sap could not bid it flow
 
 84 The Royal Family of France. 
 
 again. The present Royal Family of France is numerous enough 
 to cause any new sacrilegious Napoleon or Republican to fall into 
 either a swoon or a convulsion before attempting a further robbery 
 of the Royal children's own \ The power of number cannot stand 
 against the Almighty; as though eighty Royal sons of the House 
 of Judah did not perish in one day; as though it were more 
 difficult for the Supreme Being to continue the line of Kings 
 than to expel the dynasty of the two Napoleons out of the King- 
 dom of France; as though the destiny of generations was not 
 controlled by Him. The Capetians of the first branch numbered 
 three brothers ; not one mounted the throne. The Valois con- 
 sisted of three brothers, yet a distant relation, the ancestor of our 
 Orleans Princes, Henry IV., wore their Crown. Louis XIV. and 
 Louis XV. saw with their own eyes four generations of Dauphins 
 pass away. Neither Louis XVI., Louis XVI II., or Charles X. 
 were succeeded by their sons. The Orleans Princes, in spite of 
 the lustre of a numerous family, have eaten the bread of exile on 
 the English soil ; Holyrood, Claremont and Twickenham are 
 familiar names to contemporary Frenchmen. Let the Royal 
 Princes not give ear to flatterers ; the safety of France and the 
 future of their dynasty lie in a sublime act of political charity, 
 in placing duty above every human consideration. 
 
 The time seems drawing nigh. '' Reaction," vague and mysteri- 
 ous rumours, such as foreshadow great social crises, have been 
 floating in the air for these last few months, because Frenchmen 
 are growing more attentive to the Administration which disgraces 
 France. As to the Members of the Royal Family, no Orleanist 
 faction, or Orleanist conspiracy exists, though certain people 
 choose to believe, or at least to assert, that it does. It is 
 impossible that any definite project, any concerted plan, should 
 exist. The only plot that could be contrived, is a plot such as 
 always succeeds, which is not foiled on the eve of execution, 
 which it would be difficult to stay on the day itself, which explodes 
 in an instant, which finds thousands of conspirators, not one of 
 whom has known of it beforehand ; ii is a deep want universally 
 felt, filling the heart of every man directly it shows itself. The 
 higher and educated classes of Frenchmen thirst for that recon- 
 ciliation, implore it with ardent and earnest desire. Surely we
 
 Reconciliation. 8 
 
 cannot but hope for them that the storm is passing over ; the ship 
 will ride into port, liUes flying at the mast, and all her sails set. 
 
 But if the atonement of the nation is not complete, if France 
 must still bow before the powers that be, if the small number of 
 the loyal are to follow the example of the renegades and of the 
 foresworn, and cast lots for the shreds of the winding-sheet of their 
 old Monarchy ; if Europe is to witness all these tokens of social 
 desolation on the ruins of the Monarchy of Clovis and Henry IV., 
 honest men should still look forward to a resurrection ; they should 
 still hope for the salvation of that France for which Louis XVI. 
 intercedes before the throne of Grace. In his will, the martyr 
 King says : — " I forgive from my whole heart those who have con- 
 ducted themselves towards me as enemies, without my giving them 
 the least cause, and I pray God to forgive them. And I exhort my 
 son, if he should ever have the misfortune to reign, to forget all 
 hatred and all enmity, and especially my misfortunes and suffering. 
 I recommend to him always to consider that it is the duty of man 
 to devote himself entirely to the happiness of his fellow-men — 
 that he will promote the happiness of his subjects, only when he 
 governs according to the laws — and that the King can make the 
 laws respected and attain his object, only when he possesses the 
 necessary authority. ... I submit to Providence and neces- 
 sity in laying my innocent head on the scaffold By my death, 
 the burden of the Royal dignity devolves upon my son. Be his 
 father, and rule the State so as to transmit it to him tranquil and 
 prosperous- My desire is, that you assume the title of Regent of 
 the kingdom ; my brother, Charles Louis, will take that of Lieu- 
 tenant-Gen erah But, less by the force of arms than by the assur- 
 ance of a wise freedom and good laws, restore to my son his 
 dominions usurped by rebels. Your brother requests it of you, 
 and your King commands it Given in the Tower of the Temple, 
 January 20th, 1793." 
 
 The Royal Princes will soon discharge the rational, just and 
 generous debt burdening surely their heart and their conscience, 
 and bring back to their country " peace with honour." A message 
 to which no more fitting reply can be gratefully returned than, 
 " Honour to whom honour is due."
 
 X. 
 
 THIERS. 
 
 It belongs to French Statesmen to reduce to practice the poHtical 
 theory we have here put forth. The first among them was the 
 late M. Thiers, the " Liberator of the Territory," whose name 
 ever will be associated with the payment of the largest distraint 
 ever known, not forgetting the fact that the indemnity was fully 
 paid many weeks before the time which had been fixed, through 
 financial efforts which had appeared quite impracticable, but 
 richly merited the admiration of all Europe. M. Thiers was an 
 enlightened mind, whose logic was full of persuasion and whose 
 good sense was most practical. 
 
 Called by his unexampled services to be the Protector oi France 
 as Cromwell by his crimes rose to be the Protector of England, 
 Thiers held the fate of the country in his hands : they were safe 
 there. Of all the Statesmen who have governed Europe during 
 this century, — Ave may say, — M. Thiers was the only one who had 
 taken accurate note of the past, the only one who had learned the 
 lessons inculcated by Providence and who had deserved by making 
 an open confession of his political mistakes that the spirit of God 
 and France should speak by his mouth. In his defence of the 
 Holy See in the French Senate he said : " There is a thing more 
 worthy of respect than glory, genius, virtue; it is justice." In 
 truth, nothing could be more illogical or ridiculous than to impute 
 wild illiberality to M. Thiers or to brand his memory with prin- 
 ciples which he thoroughly abhorred. Toleration, moderatim, and 
 liberty were the political doctrines of M. Thiers ; and most of his 
 ideas and policy we find reproduced in the spirit of his personal 
 friend, M. Jules Simon. The programme of M. Thiers consisted 
 then of the Holy See, justice and national liberty. Who owns 
 not the conviction that such a programme should bring good 
 
 86
 
 T I tiers. Sy 
 
 fortune to the Statesman who supports it? and could our convic- 
 tion have been deceived had it not been for the unmanly greed 
 of partisans ? 
 
 Arbiter of the fate of France, Thiers was the safest ally to 
 Europe, if Europe, like him, had looked back and studied the 
 past. Europe was inclined to pursue a perilous policy, and she 
 is playing her last cards to-day. It is but too evident that the 
 Statesmen of our day are living from day to day and dare not 
 recall the past to their mind. Thiers was capable of warning 
 Europe as to the fate awaiting adventures and adventurers. What 
 befell the English policy of Palmerston, the Austrian manoeuvres 
 of Metternich, the French tactics of Talleyrand ? In no distant 
 future we shall ask what has become of the Italy of Cavour, and 
 where is now the Spain of Prim? M. de Bismarck possesses 
 greater genius than Metternich, Palmerston, Cavour ; but his 
 mighty plans are ventures, ventures similar, if you like to Charles 
 V.'s and Napoleon's ; but ventures that have already partly ended 
 at Canossa, and sooner or later will end, if not in a Monastery 
 of St. Just or another St. Helena, at least with a broken heart. 
 Thiers was the only Conservative in Europe ; and since his death 
 Bismarck has taken from him some useful lessons in Conservatism. 
 The pride of the victorious Prussian Minister may have winced; 
 but he was not totally blinded by a success that is almost miracu- 
 lous ; and lately he realized that before the tribunal of God and 
 of History he will appear very insignificant by the side of the 
 late Pontiff, who, having discerned his covetousness, indicated the 
 method of counteracting it, and foretold Europe the misfortunes 
 awaiting both hemispheres and addressed the German Chancellor 
 of to-day in the language of civilization and justice. 
 
 Prince von Bismarck himself and our generation may witness 
 the fulfilment of these Prussian plans, of that German Unification 
 which, according to the forecast of common sense, is to reach 
 from the North Sea to the Adriatic ; what next ? . 
 
 A great Philosopher, an illustrious writer, was gifted with pro- 
 phecy when he wrote, eleven years ago : — 
 
 " The next generation will witness the division of the Continent 
 of Europe into three or four great sections, distinguished by some 
 name or other, perhaps by that of Empire which seems to tickle
 
 88 
 
 TJie Royal Family of Fra?ice. 
 
 the ears of languid nations : Germany, with its vast unity, will be 
 one : Russia, with its gigantic extent, another ; England, with its 
 multitudinous isles and kingdoms, a third ; and when this laboured 
 transformation shall be effected, God only knows what effect it 
 may have on the peace and prosperity of nations ! Conjecture 
 here reaches to perspectives some of which may make us tremble ; 
 this state of Europe, the outcome of Democratic instincts, whilst 
 bringing into immediate contact such colossal empires, provides 
 no arbitration that may seem to restrain them. It is easy to see 
 that such an approximation must give rise to inevitable collisions, 
 and then how deadly will be the struggles, how fearful the shock, 
 how calamitous the catastrophe ! It will be beyond anything that 
 has occurred since the disruption of the Eastern Empires, since the 
 fall of the Roman Empire beneath the invasion of the barbarian 
 hordes " (Laurentie). When we think of the progressing division 
 of the world into four parts ; one extending from Archangel to 
 Varna, with or without Constantinople ; the second from Kiel to 
 Trieste, with or without Holland ; the third from Silesia to the 
 Illyrian Frontier, with or without Greece; the fourth from the 
 Straits of Behring to Panama, inclusive or not of Peru and 
 Brazil, doubtless we are filled with alarm. This idea, conceived 
 by a Statesman intoxicated with conquest and usurpation, agrees 
 with the schemes of a Mazzini, with the Republicanism of a 
 Monroe. Did not the SociaHsts band together to extol Sadowa? 
 AVhilst but the other day President Grant congratulated the 
 Emperor of Germany in significant words. Mazzini did and 
 Grant does know well that individual Monarchies wiill one day 
 clash together, and then from their fragments will be built up 
 one gigantic State, the Universal Republic of SociaHsm. Minis- 
 ters' and Crown Servants' sordid desire of gain, the burden of 
 taxation and the high price of food are the source of much internal 
 distress, disquiet, and suffering in all countries at this moment. 
 Revolutions must take place sooner or later, as citizens will not 
 bear much longer the awful taxations they have to pay off at the 
 sweat of their brow. Let this be a warning to any venturesome 
 Minister or Military Dictator whose hfe is dearer to him than the 
 ephemeral wear of the regal garb. The hearts co?itented and 
 homes happy of his subjects should be the first care of a Sovereign
 
 Thiers. 89 
 
 whose philanthropic poUcy will more readily win his people than 
 any other measures, " making each the other^s treasure, — once 
 divided, losing all" 
 
 Such is the state of contemporary Europe ; its concert is utterly 
 disorganized, and if the most powerful States are threatened, in 
 what plight can Frenchmen expect to find France, she who has 
 been disinherited of her centuries-old possessions, she who has 
 thrown overboard Kings, allies and frontiers ? 
 
 If I pass on to consider the internal state of France, I feel still 
 more the need of the powerful yet moderate prudence of the late 
 M. Thiers. Parties divided against themselveSj faction in power, 
 a horde of men who will persist in either keeping aloof from the 
 rest of the populatior^ or in assuming the selfish guardianship of 
 their interests, but preach- disaffection as well as unreason, think, 
 speak and act as foreign foes ; the finances of the country pilfered 
 or squandered at the very time when millions have to be paid 
 away for necessaries ; the army raw in its new discipline, faulty 
 in organization, through local dissensions and through having 
 become the tool of the party ini power ; anarchy amied to the 
 teeth ; the working-classes discontented' and turbulent, lowered 
 and weakened in their character, ini spite of the universal extension 
 of the Franchise, which in England is being desperately fought 
 for as the sole means of giving the labouring man more self- 
 respect, more elevation of mind ! ! ! a> Press run wild in insult, 
 recrimination and provocation against both Heaven, and earth : 
 such is the situation. 
 
 At the time of M. Thiers' election as tlieir representative, 
 twenty-six Counties had expressed a deeply-felt want as well as 
 an ardent desire. M. Thiers alone could repair internal dis- 
 asters, and prepare for France later on a return to her former 
 position among European Monarchies. He had felt the respon- 
 sibility laid upon him, and without hesitation or evasion he had 
 grasped firmly the powers given him, and declared publicly 
 that he would not yield them up, that he was the representative 
 of France, and that he countenanced no faction. When the 
 crisis had passed away j, when France was reorganized by order,, 
 economy, a just administration, and true liberty ; when agriculture,, 
 commerce, manufactures, wouM be once more in a flourishing
 
 90 The Royal Family of Frajice. 
 
 condition ; when the army had learned loyalty and discipline ; 
 when the Provincial and Municipal Councils had been purged, 
 and National Diplomacy restored France to the confidence of 
 Europe ; then, and only then, would M. Thiers have crowned his 
 edifice. "All my life," the illustrious old man said, ''I have 
 reflected on the most desirable form of government for my 
 country, and if I had had the power which no mortal ever has 
 had, I would have given to it that which during forty years of my 
 life I have striven unsuccessfully to obtain for it, the Constitutio?tal 
 Monarchy of Englaiid. I wish you to understand me thoroughly; 
 I will not flatter any faction ; I wish to speak the truth as I see 
 it, as it has shown itself to me. Well then, gentlemen, I find 
 men are free, nobly, grandly free at Washington, and that they 
 accomplish great things ; but I find men are equally free in 
 London, and, if I may be allowed to say so, even freer, perhaps, 
 than at Washington. At London the Government dwells apart 
 equally from the passions of the mighty and of the people. Never 
 in any country or in any age has a Government resided in an 
 atmosphere where judgment was so all-powerful, where judgment 
 was so untroubled. But, gentlemen, in my opinion, an opinion I 
 have always maintained, Princes who hold the reins of govern- 
 ment must accept the conditions of this form of government ; if 
 they assume the government, they must also assume its responsi- 
 bilities, which in an age so restless as our own soon become a 
 burden to the Throne. I do not wish to bring any accusation 
 against Princes whom I have ever esteemed, some of whom have 
 been beloved by me ; but in my opinion they have not understood 
 the conditions of this government. Forty years ago I said it, I 
 say it now, and during the ten years of the Empire, and I will 
 not cease to repeat it ; it is a proverb now become famous, the 
 maxim of my youth, and to which I have held faithfully all my 
 life ; Princes must admit that in its essence a Monarchy is a 
 Republic, it has been defined as a country governed by itself, 
 a Republic with an hereditary President. But, gentlemen, this 
 truth has not been understood, and forty years ago, when still 
 quite young, I wrote these words : If France will not cross the 
 Channel with us, she will be forced to cross the Atlantic " (Thiers, 
 June 8th, 187 1).
 
 Thiers. 
 
 Many Legitimists and Orleanists distrusted Thiers because 
 their foresight is short and their intellect narrow. Perhaps they 
 felt reluctant in forgiving his allowing ;^2 0,000 to the Jew Deutz 
 who discovered to M. Thiers the place of refuge of the Duchess 
 de Berry, when this noble-hearted Royal Princess attempted, in 
 1832, a popular rising for the restoration of Henry V., her son, 
 failed, and was imprisoned in the citadel of Blaye. They would 
 not understand that the declaration of the Head of the Executive 
 power meant : — 
 
 That to prepare the path of Royalty it is necessary to clear 
 away some at least of the rubbish that blocks up the way, and 
 cart away to Charenton half the maniacs masquerading as 
 Politicians ; 
 
 That any dynasty mounting the Throne before France has been 
 reconstituted both in administration and in military matters, will 
 not keep it for twelve months ; 
 
 That Royalty ought not to be burdened with an overwhelming 
 responsibility not belonging to it ; that the calumnies and slanders 
 of the Revolution must be silenced, and Europe and History 
 made to witness that the Royalty unanimously welcomed back by 
 France is a stranger to Frenchmen's defeats and to Frenchmen's 
 humiliations. 
 
 This masterly policy of M. Thiers could have been realized to 
 the letter if French Monarchists and Conservative Republicans 
 like MM. Jules Simon, Waddington, with hundreds of others, one 
 and all, had given their support to this illustrious Statesman ; if 
 they had provoked no reaction, no act of revenge ; if France had 
 had on her side those two powerful allies, God and Time ; it 
 Frenchmen had not been precipitate ; if, above all, they had 
 been thoroughly convinced that an immediate restoration was an 
 impossibility. To this end M. Thiers would have brought about 
 a public reconciliation of all the Princes of the Royal Family of 
 France ; if necessary, he would have exacted it in the name of 
 the country ; and the union of Legitimists and Orleanists thus 
 accomplished, he would have sent the people to the ballot to 
 elect a Co?istituent Assembly. Most Frenchmen were at that 
 moment aware of the obligation they would lay on their Parlia- 
 mentary Representatives. Meanwhile, Frenchmen should have
 
 The Royal Family of France. 
 
 shown every consideration to M. Thiers to strengthen him in 
 fulfiUing his arduous mission. They should have been patient \ 
 the tempest was still and is still raging, and its towering waves 
 fill minds with- fear, and cause confusion all around^ But these 
 storms have left unscathed the Royal tree, which, deeply rooted 
 in the French soil,, has survived and once again should over- 
 shadow that country with its leafy branches under whose shelter 
 its weary children will find rest. God has stamped this long 
 race of the Kings of France with His own seal. Let anarchy 
 and intrigue work their will Yes; we can understand that 
 certain men think twice before throwing aside the tool of 
 Democracy ; but the friends of liberty, we would even say true 
 Republicans,, dread the mob, that vile mob, the ruin of all Govern- 
 ments. . . . This wretched mob has betrayed to every tyrant 
 the liberty of every Government. It was the mob who betrayed 
 the liberty of Rome, for bread and games, into the power of 
 Caesar. This same mob, satiated with bread and games, later 
 on slaughters its- Emperors ; now elevating Nero to the throne, 
 and soon murdering him because he was too- rigid ; it wished to 
 debauch Otho ;. it elected the ignoble Vitellius ; and, when it had 
 lost even its valour for fightings it handed Rome over to the 
 Barbarians. This is the same mob which betrayed the liberty 
 of Florence into the hands of the Medici ; which in Holland — 
 prudent Holland — murdered the Witts, those true friends of 
 freedom. It was this vile mob which arraigned and murdered 
 BaiUy, and applauded the execution, or rather the abominable 
 assassinate of the Girondists ; which next applauded the execu- 
 tion, too well deserved, of Robespierre ; which would applaud 
 ours \ which accepted the despotism of the great man who under- 
 stood it and mastered it ; which later on rejoiced over his fall, 
 and which in 1815, and but ten years ago threw a rope round his 
 statue to drag it down into the mud. Such throughout History 
 up to this moment are the achievements, is the career of this 
 mob. But there is a Divine spirit guiding deserving nations, 
 who do not vrish to be Christian without Christ ; and a Hand 
 more mighty than the sword of her enemies is extended to guard 
 the national Monarchy.
 
 XL 
 
 DUTY. 
 
 Meanwhile let Statesmen repress without mercy the progress of 
 the country towards social democracy and towards the extinction 
 of Religion. Let the Government in power cause the Parlia- 
 mentary Representatives to understand that they are not to con- 
 sider themselves entitled to direct the policy of the Cabinet, that 
 Ministers are not their servants, and that a Minister may not 
 be dismissed at their pleasure without necessarily dismissing the 
 whole Cabinet. Let the nation prostrate herself in their temples 
 and implore God to forgive her crimes and errors ; let her make 
 her peace with Heaven. Heaven alone can restore a country 
 to the esteem of nations in preference to their mistrust ; good 
 example from the upper classes will restore the whole country 
 to self-respect. For, while the wretches, the hypocrites, and the 
 foolish, already cry out for more revenge and thirst for civil 
 war, those who believe in God and in France confess with grief 
 that they have been justly smitten for their outrageous pride, 
 apostasy, and rebeUion. Every man should remember his fore- 
 fathers, and so should the nation. Michelet writes: "Let us 
 remember (and things are so different now that our words carry 
 weight) that nothwithstanding our levity, our follies, our vices 
 even, ancient France was justly called the most Christian People. 
 Our ancestors were certainly the people of love and grace, 
 whether taken in a human or Christian sense, both are equally 
 true. The Frenchman, even when vicious, preserved more than 
 others his right reason and good heart. Let not contemporary 
 France forget the watchword of ancient France." 
 
 " Our real enemy is Demagogy ; and I will not betray the last 
 remnant of social order, that is to say, the Catholic Church, into 
 its hands " (Thiers). The watchword of ancient France then 
 
 93
 
 94 The Royal Family of France. 
 
 is Faith. Those nations who walk loyally in the sacred paths of 
 their forefathers are of the elect. They may have wounded 
 themselves in thorny by-ways of History; they may have had 
 their follies, their frailties, their falls, their revolutions. But they 
 will survive their misfortunes, and in spite of the injustice of 
 neighbouring States, and the chastising hand of Providence, they 
 will ever be the children of that same Providence. 
 
 The whole history of France asserts and proclaims it. It is 
 Christianity that made France great, happy, and prosperous ; it 
 is heresy, unbelief, revolution, that rend, degrade, and ruin her. 
 Many lies and sophistries have been spread abroad to disguise 
 the truth. We will not allude even to the Trpooroi/ if/evSoq of the 
 19th century: the cheating Declaration of the Rights of Man 
 hatched in 1789. To the ignorant and the interested, hints are 
 useless. But amongst gross untruths it is advanced by Free- 
 thinkers and revolutionary politicians of the New Reformation 
 School, that Frenchmen as Catholics acknowledging the supre- 
 macy of the Holy See, whose interests might not always agree 
 with those of their country, are bound in certain circumstances 
 to give precedence to their duty as Christians over their duty 
 as Frenchmen. It is easy to answer this lying calumny. French- 
 men as Catholics acknowledge but one Master, and this Master 
 is God. They honour Him at Rome in the person of His earthly 
 Representative and there serve Him as Christians. In France 
 they serve Him as citizens by the due observance of the laws 
 of their country, by earnestly fighting in the defence of truth, 
 justice, and rightful liberty. These two duties, so distinct from 
 each other, are far from being antagonistic; indeed each is the 
 complement of the other, and are of mutual assistance. Pro- 
 perly understood, they could never be placed in opposition. If 
 at times it seems difficult to make them agree, the fault lies, not 
 with French Catholics, but with those designing sectarians who 
 assail the most sacred rights of conscience in striving to destroy 
 the faith and convictions which form the happiness and dignity of 
 man ; who dishonour France and lead her to certain destruction 
 by handing her over to every passion and licence ; mischievous, 
 selfish, and costly ribalds, who really detest moral and good 
 government and good people, because these will not shelter
 
 Duty. 95 
 
 Socialists, Anarchists, and incendiaries. vSuch infernal men are 
 making a nation, as a civilized nation in the world, false to her 
 destiny, which is to spread abroad in that world and to defend 
 therein with all her might the religion of Christ, which alone can 
 lead man in the way of truth, and outside of which he finds 
 neither law, truth, liberty, nor justice, and consequently neither 
 peace, greatness, nor true civilization. But young Frenchmen as 
 well as young Englishmen should be taught by the example of 
 their parents and friends and often reminded that fidelity to one's 
 flag and testimony to one's truth are of the first necessity if they 
 would be honest men, and not apes for whom the most tolerant 
 can have no respect nor the most charitable pity.
 
 XII. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 Now as to a practical conclusion to what we have said. Some 
 incurable and radical blindness must have come over the French 
 to prevent their seeing that in this their Third Republic, as 
 in the first two, everything is steadily deteriorating from bad to 
 worse. France in a state of Republicanism seems never to be able 
 to' avoid those crises when everything threatens to fall to pieces in 
 the fury of social war, as Greek civilization fell in the convulsions 
 of Athenian demagogy, and Roman civilization in the corruption 
 of the Later Empire. 
 
 While Victor Hugo's drama, '' Le Roi s'amuse " (a gross and 
 scandalous libel on the character of Francis I. and, in his person, 
 on the principle of Monarchy), is for the moment turning French- 
 men's interest from home and foreign politics to the theatre— that 
 institution so dear to every Frenchman— the question of the 
 Budget and the lamentable deficit it reveals has called out able 
 and alarming articles from the pen of MM. Leroy-Beaulieu and 
 Leon Say. The force of public opinion sides with the Opposition 
 at present on the subject so strongly, that the numerous caricatures 
 representing the Ministers all feeling their pockets for the "missing 
 hundred millions," and accusing each other of having made away 
 with them, are allowed to stand in the shop windows, where they 
 draw crowds of spectators, without the police wanting to interfere. 
 
 Whatever the causes of the deficit in the Budget for 1881 may 
 be, the fact remains that it exists, and that it has to be dealt with. 
 The Report for the past year shows that France imported one 
 thousand one hundred millions of francs more than she exported. 
 The commercial situation is consequently on a par with the 
 financial one. The commercial decadence is attributable by 
 many to the Treaty of i860 ; and the Republic is made for not 
 
 96
 
 Co7iclusmt. 97 
 
 altering that treaty and organizing a new system of Custom House 
 duties. It might be more to the purpose to seek the reason of 
 the present financial disarray, and depression in the senseless waste 
 of public funds which is being displayed by Republicans in every 
 department of the public service, and which, according to authen- 
 tic calculations, has led to the expenses of the country being 
 increased to the following proportions : four times more than 
 under Napoleon I. ; three times more than under the Restoration ; 
 twice more than under King Louis Philippe, and exactly double 
 what they were under Napoleon III. 
 
 The men who have been in power under M. Grevy's reign are, 
 with a few exceptions, needy adventurers who have taken the 
 carpet-bag with empty pockets and left it with their pockets full ; 
 who have become millionaires with a rapidity which is not to be 
 explained by any commercial or financial transactions, and which 
 justly excites the maddening indignation of the ratepayers, and 
 the jealousy of unsuccessful competitors for the portefeuille, which 
 proves a Fortunatus' purse to those who hold it even for the short 
 life of a Republican Ministry. 
 
 It is time that in France, as in Ireland, as in every European 
 country, a vigorous reaction should assert itself against the Jaco- 
 bins, whether national or international, who would rule the world 
 by terror, against the spirit of disorder which overwhelms modern 
 society, against the general moral enfeeblement of characters 
 who have lost their power of resistance. It is not enough to 
 have Heads of the State living in palaces where officials meet, 
 whom we entitle Ministers because they each bring with them a 
 carpei-bag^ officials who individually may all be honourable citizens, 
 but who do not form what we ordinarily mean by a Government. 
 What we mean by a Government, is a responsible Cabinet, of 
 which the members hold identical opinions on all the important 
 questions of the day, on all the details of general policy, domestic 
 or foreign ; and who, feeling themselves backed by compact and 
 homogeneous majorities, the official expression of public opinion, 
 can repress with a strong hand civil tumult, can control and 
 disarm faction, and can ensure the maintenance of order, without 
 violating the guarantees of freedom, without having recourse to 
 exceptional legislation. 
 
 G
 
 98 The Royal Family of France. 
 
 Do the French of this Third Republic possess this unity, this 
 firm and homogeneous will ? or is it not proved by present facts 
 that the French Republic in 1882 is simply another Tower of 
 Babel ? This we all can see and judge for ourselves. Let us pass 
 on. 
 
 As a contrast, French History shows us how, in 1831, in the 
 Lyons insurrection, the revolutionary party were disarmed by 
 the Ministry of Pe'rier. But the fact is, that in 1831 the King 
 of France and his Ministers were a real Government, which 
 governed, supported by the majority of the Chamber of Deputies, 
 and the majority of the House of Peers; and that these were 
 real and serious majorities, which knew the objects of their 
 desires and of their efforts. These Deputies and these Peers were 
 pre-eminently Frenchmen ; in short, at that date, from the Throne 
 to the cottage, France was herself and ruled herself At that date 
 the adherents of the Monarchy were sets of unpaid^ unshaken, 
 unseduced, unterrified men ; to-day the followers of Democracy 
 are servile majorities, ready to silence the minorities who de- 
 nounce corruption, and dare enter a last and fearless protest. 
 Reasoning that fails for the moment will tell, we trust, in the long 
 run, because no living power has yet finally survived an honest 
 cause undeservedly defeated. Lheure est a Dieu I " Events are 
 in the saddle, and they ride mankind." Unexpected develop- 
 ments are sure to arise, and the probability is that well-known 
 tenants of another man's property will be forced to rush away 
 forgotten in utter obscurity. How only the last thirty-five years 
 of French History " some pregnant truths convey " about plotters 
 and betrayers ! Plainly so weighty and comprehensive a History 
 as that of France and of her Royal Family should shield a large 
 minority from oppression, and it is a factor which will certainly 
 influence largely the current of politics in the coming years. 
 " Pais que dais ; advienne que pourra ! " 
 
 End. 
 
 Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London.
 
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