power and effect as an orator he was unrivalled; and his "Histoire des Girondins is one of the most splendid and ornate narratives extant in the world. He had much of the hero about him; he was a man of fine sentiments, of noble impulses, of generous emotions, of a courage worthy of Bayard, and greater perhaps than even Bayard would have shown in civil struggles. In the first three days of the Provisional Government, Lamartine was truly a great man: he was exactly the man demanded by the crisis; he had all the qualities those sixty hours of "fighting with human beasts "required;-and it was not till that long agony was passed, and the government, once fairly seated, was called upon to act, that his profound incapacity and ignorance of political science became apparent. No man spoke more ably or more nobly: no man could have acted more madly, weakly, or irresolutely. He sank at once like a stone. From being the admiration of Europe—the central object on whom all eyes were turned, he fell with unexampled rapidity into disrepute, obscurity, and contempt; and the entire absence of dignity, manliness, and sense betrayed in his subsequent writings has been astounding and appalling. The words in which he sums up the characteristics of the old Girondins are precisely descriptive of himself:-" Ils ne savaient faire que deux choses-bien parler, et bien mourir."

The peculiar administrative institutions of France present another obstacle of the most formidable nature

to the establishment of a stable republican government in that country. There are two distinct and opposite systems of administration, the municipal or selfgoverning, and the centralising or bureaucratic; and the degree of real freedom enjoyed by any nation will depend more on the circumstance which of these systems it has adopted, than on the form of its government or the name and rank of its ruler. The former system prevails in America, in England, and in Norway; the latter is general upon the Continent, and has reached its extreme point in Germany and France. The two systems as usually understood, are utterly irreconcilable: they proceed upon opposite assumptions; they lead to opposite results. The municipal system proceeds on the belief that men can manage their own individual concerns, and look after their own interests for themselves; and that they can combine for the management of such affairs as require to be carried on in concert. Centralisation proceeds on the belief that men cannot manage their own affairs, but that government must do all for them. The one system narrows the sphere of action of the central power to strictly national and general concerns; the other makes this sphere embrace, embarrass, and assist at the daily life of every individual in the community. Out of the one system a republic naturally springs; or, if the form of national government be not republican in name, it will have the same freedom, and the same advantages as if it were:-out of the other no republic can arise; on it no republic, if

forcibly engrafted, can permanently take root; its basis, its fundamental idea, is despotic.

In

In no country has the centralising system been carried so far as in France. In no country does it seem so suitable to or so submissively endured by the inhabitants. In no country is the metropolis so omnipotent in fashion, in literature, and in politics. In none is provincialism so marked a term of contempt. none has the minister at the centre such a stupendous army of functionaries at his beck, appointed by his choice, and removable at his pleasure. The number of civil officers under the control of the central government in France is 535,000; in England it is 23,000. The functions of these individuals penetrate into every man's home and business; they are cognisant of, and license or prohibit his goings out and comings in, his buildings and pullings down, his entering into, or leaving business, and his mode of transacting it. This system, which in England would be felt to be intolerably meddlesome and vexatious, is (it is in vain to disguise it) singularly popular in France; it is a grand and magnificent fabric to behold; it dates in its completeness from the Consulate, when the nation first began to breathe freely after the revolutionary storms; and amid all the changes and catastrophes which have since ensued, amid governments overthrown and dynasties chased away, no one has made any serious endeavour to alter or even to mitigate this oppressive and paralysing centralisation. It has evidently penetrated into and harmonises with the national character.

D

The idea of ruling themselves is one which has not yet reached the French understanding the idea of choosing those who are to rule them is the only one they have hitherto been able to conceive.

Now, this system, and the habits of mind which it engenders, operate in two ways to add to the difficulties of establishing a firm and compact government. In the first place, it deprives the people of all political education? it shuts them out from the means of obtaining political practice or experience; it forbids that daily association of the citizens with the proceedings of the government, from which only skill and efficient knowledge is to be derived. In England and in America, every citizen is trained in vestries, in boards of guardians, in parochial or public meetings, in political unions, in charitable societies, in magistrates' conclaves, to practise all the arts of government and self-government on a small scale and in an humble sphere; so that when called upon to act in a higher function, and on a wider stage, he is seldom at a loss. This apprenticeship, these normal schools, are wholly wanting to the Frenchman. The establishment of them and practice in them is an essential preliminary to the formation of any republic that can last. The French have been busy in erecting the superstructure, but have never thought of laying the foundation. The following contrast drawn by a citizen of the United States is, in many respects, just and instructive :

"It has never been denied that political institutions are healthful and durable only according as they have naturally

grown out of the manners and wants of the population among which they exist. Thus, the inhabitants of the United States, inheriting from their English ancestors the habit of taking care of themselves, and needing nothing but to be left to the government of their own magistrates, have gone on prospering and to prosper in the work of their own hands. Every state, county, city, and town in America, you need not be told, has always been accustomed to manage its own concerns without application to or interference from the supreme authority at the capital. And this self-controlling policy is so habitual and ingrained wherever the Anglo-Saxon race has spread, that it will for ever present an insuperable obstacle to the successful usurpation of undue authority by any individual. The people of the thirteen original transatlantic states, in the construction of a commonwealth, had only to build upon a real and solid foundation made to hand; but in France the reverse of this was the case when in the last century a republic was proclaimed, and continues so now, without any material diminution of the rubbish, which must be swept away before a trustworthy basis can be found for the most dangerous experiment in a nation's history. The executive power, securely ensconced in central Paris, like a sleepless fly-catcher in the middle of his well-spun web, feels and responds to every vibration throughout the artfully organised system, which extends from channel to sea, and from river to ocean. Its aim has been to keep the departments in leading - strings, and its success to prevent neighbours from leaning only on each other for neutral aid and comfort in every undertaking great or small, and to drive them to the minister of the interior as the sole dispenser of patronage. Provincialism has hence become naturally associated with social inferiority, sliding easily into vulgarity; and as vulgarity is often carelessly taken for intellectual incapacity, the consequence is, that the many millions living at a distance from the factitious fountain of power are regarded and treated as children, even in matters that most deeply concern their daily comfort. If, for example, a river is to be bridged, a morass drained, or a church erected, more time is lost in negotiating at head-quarters for permission to commence the undertaking than would suffice in England or America to accomplish the same object twice over. Disgusted, doubtless, with all this, and, as too frequently happens, expressly educated by aspiring parents for some official employment,