ance to the decrees of the sovereign power, in possession of the armed force of the capital, the treasury, the telegraph, and the post-office, can arise in France elsewhere than in the capital? Civil war, therefore, on an extended scale over the country, is improbable; and the victorious leaders of the Revolution, delivered from immediate apprehension of domestic danger, save in their own metropolis, have no motive for shocking the feelings of mankind, and endangering their relations with foreign powers, by needless and unnecessary deeds of cruelty. It was during the struggle with the patricians that the proscriptions of Sylla and Marius deluged Italy with blood. After they were destroyed by mutual slaughter and the denunciations of the Triumvirate, though there was often the greatest possible tyranny and oppression under the emperors, there was none of the wholesale destruction of life which disgraced the republic, when the rival factions fronted each other in yet undiminished strength.

Although, however, for these reasons we do not anticipate, at least at present, those sanguinary proscriptions which have for ever rendered infamous the first Revolution, yet we fear there is reason to apprehend changes not less destructive in their tendency, misery still more widespread in its effects, destined, perhaps, to terminate at last in bloodshed not less universal. Men have discovered that they are not mere beasts of prey; they cannot live on flesh and blood. But they have learned also that they can live very well on capital and property; and it is against these, in consequence, that the present Revolution will be directed. They will not be openly assailed: direct confiscations of possessions have fallen almost as much into disrepute as the shedding torrents of blood on the scaffold. The thing will be done more covertly, but not the less effectually. They will take a leaf out of the former private lives of the Italians, and the recent public history of Great Britain. We have shown them that, under cover of a cry for the emancipation of slaves, property to the amount of one hundred and twenty millions can be quietly and securely destroyed in the colonies; that, veiled under the disguise of placing the currency on a secure basis, a half can be added to all the debts, and as much taken from the remuneration of every species of industry, throughout the country. These are great dis

coveries, they are the glory of modern civilisation: they have secured the support of the whole Liberal party in Great Britain. The objects of the French Revolutionists are wholly different, but the mode of proceeding will be the same. The stiletto and the poison bowl have gone out of fashion they are discarded as the rude invention of a barbarous age. The civilised Italians have taught us how to do the thing. Slow and unseen poison is the real secret ; there are Lucretia Borgias in the political not less than the physical world. The great thing is to secure the support of the masses by loud professions of philanthropy, and the warmest expressions of an interest in the improvement of mankind; and having roused them to action, and paralysed the defenders of the existing order of things by these means, then to turn the united force of the nation to their own purposes, and the placing of the whole wealth of the state at their disposal. Thus the ends of Revolution are gained without its leaders being disgraced: the substantial advantages of a transfer of property are enjoyed without a moral reaction being raised up against it. Fortunes are made by some, without a direct spoliation of others being perceived: multitudes are involved in misery, but then they do not know to what cause their distresses are owing, nor is any peculiar obloquy brought upon the real authors of the public calamities.

We do not say that the present Provisional Government of France are actuated by these motives, any more than we say that our Negro emancipators or bullionists and free-traders meant, in pursuing the system which they have adopted, to occasion the wholesale and ruinous destruction of property which their measures have occasioned. We consider both the one and the other as political fanatics; men inaccessible to reason, insensible to experience; who pursue certain visionary theories of their own, wholly regardless of the devastation they produce in society, or the misery they occasion in whole classes of the state. That is the essence of political fanaticism; it rages at present with equal violence on both sides of the Channel. In the present Provisional Government of France are some able and eloquent men, all of them, we believe, well-meaning and sincere. But they set out with discarding the lessons of experience; their principle

is an entire negation of all former systems of government. They think a new era has opened in human affairs that the first Revolution has destroyed the former method of directing mankind, and the present has ushered in the novel one. They see no bounds to the spread of human felicity, by the adoption of a social system different from any which has yet obtained among them. They have adopted the ideas of Robespierre without his blood, the visions of Rousseau without his profligacy.

The writings of Lamartine and Louis Blanc clearly reveal these principles, particularly the "Histoire des Girondins " of the former, and the "Dix Ans de l' Histoire de Louis Philippe" of the latter. Lamartine says the Girondists fell because they did not, on the 10th August 1792, when the throne was overturned, instantly proclaim a republic, and go frankly and sincerely into the democratic system. If he himself falls, it will not be from a repetition of the error; he has done what they left undone. We shall see the result. Experience will prove whether, by discarding all former institutions, we have cast off at the same time the slough of corruption which has descended to all from our first parents. We shall see whether the effects of the Fall can be shaken off by changing the institutions of society; whether the Devil cannot find as many agents among the Socialists as the Jacobins; whether he cannot mount on the shoulders of Lamartine and Arago as well as he did on those of Robespierre and Marat. In the mean time, while we are the spectators of this great experiment, we request the attention of our readers to the following interesting particulars regarding the acts of the new Government, the professions they have made, the expectations which are formed of them.

One of the most popular journals of the working classes of Paris-that is, the present rulers of France-the Democratie Pacifique, has adopted the following mottoes:

"The Revolution of 1789 has destroyed the old Regime; that of 1848 should establish the new one."

"Social reform is the end, as Republic is the means: all the Socialists are Republicans; all the Republicans are Socialists.” *

The methods by which the plans of the Socialists are to * Democratie Pacifique, 1st March 1848.

be worked out, are in the same journal declared to be as follows:

66 PROGRAMME OF THE PEOPLE.

"A man with a heart,-a man greatly loved by the working classes,has lent his hand to the formation of a programme dictated by the popular will. The ideas on which it rests, treated as utopian yesterday, have no need to be discussed to-day. The last Revolution is an explosion of light which has dissipated the darkness. The Socialist ideas, railed at yesterday, accepted to-day, will be realised to-morrow. Its principles are

“İ. The rights of labour.—It is the duty of the State to furnish employment, and if necessary a minimum of wages, to all the members of society whom private industry does not employ.

"II. House of refuge for industry.

"III. Despotism must be for ever disarmed by the transformation of the army into industrial regiments, (en regiments industriels,) suited alike to the defence of the territory and the execution of the great works of the Republic.

"IV. Public education, equal, gratuitous, and obligatory upon all.

"V. Savings-banks, (caisses d'épargne,) which keep capital dead, shall be vivified by labour: the people who produce all riches can afford to be their own bankers.

"VI. A universal reform of law courts: juries everywhere. "VII. Absolute freedom of communications of thought.

"VIII. A progressive scale of taxation.

"IX. A progressional tax on machinery employed in industry.

"X. An effectual guarantee for a fair division of profits between the capitalists and the workmen.

XI. A tax on luxury.

"XII. Universal suffrage.
"XIII. A national assembly.

"XIV. Annual elections by all.

"Vive la Republique !

Gardons nos armes !"*

To carry out these principles, they propose a general centralisation of all undertakings in the hands of government, to be brought under the direct control of a simple majority of universal suffrage electors. In the same journal we find the following proposals:

"ABSORPTION OF RAILWAYS BY THE STATE.

"Let us reproduce to-day, with the certainty of being heard by the country, the wishes which the Democratie Pacifique has announced every morning since its origin, seventeen years ago.

"I. All railways, roads, canals, and public ways, by which the life of France circulates, to be absorbed by the State.

"II. The State should undertake all stage-coaches, carriers, waggons, and means of conveyance or transport, of every description.

"III. All joint-stock banks should be absorbed by the State-(A l'état les banques confédérées.)

"IV. All insurance companies, mines, and salt-works, to be undertaken by the State.

"V. No more forestalling, accumulating, regrating, or anarchical competition. Feudal industry is pierced to the heart; let us not allow it to raise itself from the dust." t

* Democratie Pacifique, 1st March 1848, p. 1.

+ Ibid.

Such are the proposals to be found in a single journal which represents the ideas that are now fermenting in the mind of France.

These propositions will probably " donnent à penser," as the French say, to most of our readers. Some of them will perhaps be of opinion that our lively neighbours are getting on at railway speed in the regeneration of society. We recommend their projects to the consideration of the numerous holders of French railway and other stock, in the British islands. They will doubtless get good round sums for their claims of damages against the French government, when it has absorbed all the joint-stock companies of the country the more so when it is recollected, 1st, That the damages will be assessed by juries elected by universal suffrage. 2d, That they will be paid by a government appointed by an assembly elected in the same way. We are not surprised, when such ideas are afloat in the ruling and irresistible workmen of Paris, who have just overturned Louis Philippe at the head of 100,000 men, that the French funds have fallen thirty-five per cent in these few days, and railway and other stock in a still greater proportion. The Paris 3-per-cents are now (March 18) at 50; the 5-per

cents at 72.

Nor let it be said that these ideas are the mere dreams of enthusiasts, which never can be carried into practice by any government. These enthusiasts are now the ruling power in the state; their doctrines are those which will quickly be carried into execution by the liberal and enlightened masses, invested by universal suffrage with supreme dominion in the Republic. Most assuredly they will carry their ideas into execution; the seed which the liberal writers of France have been sowing for the last thirty years, will bring forth its appropriate fruits. What power is to prevent the adoption of these popular and highly lauded "improvements," after the government of Louis Philippe and Guizot has been overturned by their announcement ? These persons stood as the barrier between France and the "social revolution " with which it was menaced when they were destroyed, all means of resisting it are at an end, and the friends of humanity must trust to prevent its extension to other states, mainly to the reaction arising from its experienced effects in the land of its birth.