Various - The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 03, No. 18, April, 1859

The feeling that was allowed to have such sway in Rome, and the triumph of which was followed with such important consequences, has often manifested itself in modern times, in the course of great political struggles, and has proved a powerful disturbing cause on several occasions. One of these occasions has fallen under the observation of the existing generation, and some remarks on it may not be out of place.

The French Revolution of 1848 was followed by an alarm on the part of men of property, or of those whose profits depended on the integrity of property being respected, which produced grave effects, the end whereof is not yet. That revolution was the consequence of a movement as purely political as the world ever saw. There was discontent with the government of M. Guizot, which extended to the royal family, and in which the bourgeoisie largely shared, the very class upon the support of which the House of Orleans was accustomed to rely. Had the government yielded a little on some political points, and made some changes in the administration, Louis Philippe might have been living at the Tuileries at this very moment, or sleeping at St. Denis. But, insanely obstinate, under dominion of the venerable delusion that obstinacy is firmness, the King fell, and with him fell, not merely his own dynasty, but the whole system of government which France had known for a generation, and under which she was, painfully and slowly, yet with apparent sureness, becoming a constitutional state. A warm political contest was converted into a revolution scarcely less complete than that of 1789, and far more sweeping than that of 1830. Perhaps there would have been little to regret in this, had it not been, that, instead of devoting their talents to the establishing of a stable republican government, several distinguished Frenchmen, whom we never can think capable of believing the nonsense they uttered, began to labor to bring about a sort of social Arcadia, in which all men were to be made happy, and which was to be based on contempt for political economy and defiance of common sense. Property, with its usual sensitiveness, took the alarm, and the Parisians soon had one another by the throat. How well founded was this alarm, it would be difficult to say. Most likely it was grossly exaggerated, and had no facts of importance to go upon. That among the disciples of M. Louis Blanc there were gentlemen who had no respect for other men's property, because they had no property of their own, it is quite safe to believe; but that they had any fixed ideas about seizing property, or of providing labor at high wages for workmen, it would be impossible to believe, even if Albert, ouvrier , that most mythical of revolutionists, were to make solemn affidavit of it on the works of Aurora Dudevant. Some vague ideas about relieving the wants of the poor, Louis Blanc and his associates had, just as all men have them who have heads to see and hearts to feel the existence of social evils. Had they obtained possession of the French government, immediately after Louis Philippe, to use his own words, had played the part of Charles X., they would have failed utterly, as Lamartine and his friends failed, and much sooner too. Lamartine failed as a statesman,—he lacked that power to govern which far less able men than he have exhibited under circumstances even more trying than those into which he so unguardedly plunged,—and Louis Blanc would have been no more successful than the poet. The failure of the "Reds" would have been the more complete, if they had had an opportunity to attempt the realization of the Socialistic theories attributed to them, but which few of their number could ever have entertained. They sought political power for the usual purposes; but as they stood in the way of several other parties, those parties united to crush them, which was done in "the Days of June." It is easy to give a fallen enemy a bad name, and the conquered party on that occasion were stigmatized as the enemies of everything that men hold dear, particular emphasis being laid on their enmity to property, which men hold dearer than all other things combined. The belief seems to have been all but universal throughout Europe, and to have been shared by many Americans, that the party which was conquered in the streets of Paris by Cavaignac was really an organization against property, which it meant to steal, and so afford a lively illustration of the doctrine attributed to it, that property is theft. To this belief, absurd as it was, must we look for the whole course of European history during the last ten years. The restoration of the Napoleonic dynasty in France, the restoration of the Papacy by French soldiers, the reëstablishment of Austrian ascendency over Italy, and the invasion of Hungary by the Russians,—these and other important events that have happened under our eyes, and which have enabled us to see history in the making on a large scale, all are directly traceable to the alarm which property experienced immediately after the class of property-holders had allowed the Revolution of February to take place, and to sweep away that dynasty in which their principles stood incarnate. The French imperial throne is in an especial manner the result of that alarm. When General Cavaignac had succeeded in conquering the "Reds," a military dictatorship followed his victory as a matter of course, and it remained with him to settle the future of France. The principles of his family led him to sympathize with the "oppressed nationalities" which were then struggling in so many places for freedom; and had he interfered decidedly in behalf of the Italians and Hungarians, he would have changed the fate of Europe. He would have become the hero of the great political movement which his country had inaugurated, and his sword would have outweighed the batons of Radetzky and Paskevitsch. Both principle and selfishness pointed to such intervention, and there can be no doubt that the Republican Dictator seriously thought of it. But the peculiarities of his position forbade his following the path that was pointed out to him. As the champion of property, as the chief of the coalesced parties which had triumphed over "the enemies of property" in the streets and lanes of "the capital of civilization," he was required to concentrate his energies on domestic matters. Yet further: all men in other countries who were contending with governments were looked upon by the property party in France as the enemies of order, as Agrarians, who were seeking the destruction of society, and therefore were not worthy of either the assistance or the sympathy of France; so that the son of the old Conventionist of '93 was forced, by the views of the men of whom he so strangely found himself the chief, to become in effect the ally of the Austrian Kaiser and the Russian Czar. The Italians, who were seeking only to get rid of "barbarian" rule, and the Hungarians, who were contending for the preservation of a polity as old as the English Constitution against the destructives of the imperial court, were held up to the world as men desirous in their zeal for revolution to overturn all existing institutions! Aristocrats with pedigrees that shamed those of the Bourbon and the Romanoff were spoken of in language that might possibly have been applicable to the lazzaroni of Naples, that lazzaroni being on the side of the "law and order" classes. As General Cavaignac did nothing to win the affections of the French people, as he was the mere agent of men rendered fierce by fear, it cannot be regarded as strange, that, when the Presidential election took place, he found himself nowhere in the race with Louis Napoleon. He was deserted even by a large portion of the men whose work he had done so well, but who saw in the new candidate for their favor one who could become a more powerful protector of property than the African general,—one who had a name of weight, not merely with the army, but with that multitudinous peasant class from which the French army is mainly conscribed, and which, containing numerous small property-holders, is fanatically attached to the name of Napoleon. Thus the cry of "Property in danger" ended, in 1851, in the restoration of open despotism, which every sensible observer of French affairs expected after Louis Napoleon was made President, his Presidency being looked upon only as a pinch-beck imitation of the Consulate of 1799-1804. This is the ordinary course of events in old countries: revolution, fears of Agrarianism, and the rushing into the jaws of the lion in order to be saved from the devouring designs of a ghost.