they were to be dispersed in the provinces, to be employed upon great works of public utility-upon railroads and canals, that stood still for want of hands: while money was lavishly promised them for this work, which the treasury could no longer afford upon unproductive labour. What was their answer ? That they, the people, had made the revolution in Paris, that they were the masters of Paris, that Paris was theirs, to work in it their work; that, as masters of Paris, they were not to be bid to leave it; that leave it they would not; that if labour failed, money must be found them at all events, or they would find means of taking it; in short, that they would not be degraded by being sent into the provinces. The workmen of Paris claim, then, to be the masters of the capital, and still more, in their esteem, the masters of all France. The people of Paris, then, is the people; it owns no other. Now the people, in modern republican phrase, and alas! in government decrees also, is by no means the nation; it means the lower classes alone. The people, it has been previously declared, is the sovereign people, whose voice is the voice of God; then, they reply, by the simplest reasoning, the sovereign people, whose voice is the voice of God-it is alone we: it is the lower classes. But there is still another deduction to be drawn. Among the lower classes it is only the active, the stirring, the discontented, the disorderly and tumultuous, who come forward in evidence as the representatives of this people. And thus it is very clear that the sovereign people, whose voice is the voice of God, the sovereign of France, is a small body of uneducated, misled, and wrongheaded men in the capitak So stands the account in theory. And who can deny that, in theory, they are in truth the masters? Who shall say when the chances of revolutionary struggles may not make them so in fact?

So stands the state of feeling on the side of Paris-how stands it on the other side?

When the revolution of February broke out, the departments scarcely knew themselves, their wishes, or their feelings. They had no mutual understanding. They were taken by

66

surprise. They had not the time to consult their sentiments. Notoriously anti-republican as has been shown to have been the spirit of all France in the departments, they accepted, however, from old habit, the dictum of Paris: they accepted, as has been before remarked, from that species of resignation shown in France to a fait accompli: they accepted from a wish to avoid all further convulsion, from a love of established order in whatever shape it might come-from a hope that, whatever the form of government proclaimed and imposed upon the country, all would go well." And besides, the republic, they were told, was only a provisional form of government at a moment of crisis, when no other could be adopted: upon its future form of government, the country, it was said, was to be freely consulted: the provinces were not prepared for the ulterior dictum of Paris, that, without consulting the nation at all, the republic was to be considered as definitive; and that those who desired a change would be regarded as traitors to their country. But France is not what it was; it is enlightened by the experience of successive revolutions. The jealousy of the departments towards despotic Paris had long been boiling in men's hearts: it did not at first boil over; but when, instead of order and peace, the provinces found that the new government produced only results of disorder, animosity, and ruin, the departments began to grumble and murmur openly for the first time they seemed determined to show that they ought to have, and would have, a will of their own. In the commencement all was tranquil. In some parts of France the republic was accepted, if not with that enthusiasm which lying Parisian papers would have induced the world to believe, at all events with a species of contentment, arising from the trust that a more equitable popular government would relieve the mass from some of those charges which weighed so heavily upon them under the former government, and remove constraints that were painful to them. In other parts, there prevailed a sort of sullen resignation to the establishment of a régime which was dreaded from an

experience of a hateful past, and was repulsive to its tastes-but it was a resignation to the fait accompli. Some thus hoped, and others feared; but all combined in assuming an attitude of quiet expectation.

In this state was France, when an imprudent Minister of the Interior, pushed on by ambitious, designing, misguided, and reckless men, sent down as a scourge upon the country those commissaries of obnoxious memory, who were publicly charged to work their will upon the departments as they pleased, by the means they pleased, by whatever oppressive or repressive measures they pleased, provided they worked the suspected and mistrusted departments into a proper feeling of true republican principle, according to the most ultra traditional doctrines of old republicanism. Down upon the country came the autocratic commissaries with these instructions; and, in too many instances, with the best intentions of torturing and tormenting the country, after their own fashion and according to their own views, to their heart's content. Down they came, with their history of the first republic in their heads, and the desire in their hearts of emulating the zeal of those fearful representatives of the people of the last century, who ruled in the departments, each a petty, but a bloody tyrant. To all alike the same violence of disposition must not be attributed there were a few more prudent and better-thinking men among the number-although they, in certain instances, were afterwards accused in high quarters of mild laxity, and recalled as suspected of moderatism; but the many were evidently disposed to play the tyrant to the life, in their desperate measures to twist the country to their will. The times, however, were changed; the spirit of the age no longer permitted of the same violence. Messieurs les Commissaires could not well proceed by the old established and expeditious method of cementing the foundations of republics, one and indivisible, by blood, or erecting the scaffolding of the edifice on scaffolds. Shootings, drownings, and guillotinings, were instruments rather too rough to be accepted by the manners of the time. But they had other means in their power, and

according to the tenor of their instructions, which they thought to use, and attempted to use, with just as much effect. They dismissed functionaries in wholesale numbers-put their creatures, or those who cringed and worshipped, in their places, with orders to brow-beat and bully the recalcitrant, and with the exhibition of high example before their eyes. They threatened and accused; and when these means failed, according to their fancy, or when they were too mild for the taste of Master Commissary, the other underhand instruments of terrorism, already mentioned, were employed to make men crouch and tremble. The manner in which mobs have been excited against the better classes, or those who were suspected of moderatism, by manœuvres unequivocally traced to the agency of the commissaries themselves, and the frightful excesses committed, are matters of common notoriety and of newspaper history. The scenes of the old Revolution were resorted to, although in another form; and not only supposed anti-republican sentiment, but moderatism, was endeavoured to be kept down by agents of terror, and the ever-ready riotous populations of the great towns. would be an endless and a useless task to re-transcribe all the scenes of the violence of an insensate mob, secretly got up by the republican agents in authority, more than secretly connived at, and openly and avowedly excused and applauded. The rod that the commissary himself could not prudently employ, he placed in the hands of a designedly inflamed and infuriated people, to scourge the country to his will. One of the strongest instances, however, may be found in that state of continual terror on the one hand, and violence on the other, which for many long weeks hung over the head of the doomed city of Lyons. See there the mob constituting itself into illegally armed bodies, sundered from and inimical to the national guards, assuming names such as les voraces and les dévorants, by which they themselves marked their character, ruling the whole city of Lyons by fear; exacting, spoliating, arresting suspects at will; searching the houses of quiet inhabitants under the pretext of conspiracies against the republic

It

that did not exist, and of concealed arms, such as they themselves illegally bore, that never could be found; dragging trembling priests from the altar to be confined in cellars, because they were suspected of anti-republicanism; laying their hands upon church plate as the property of traitors; liberating prisoners arrested for revolt and disorder-arresting the magistrates who had condemned them; dictating their orders to military officers for the release of soldiers put under restraint; pulling a general from his horse, and nearly immolating him to the wrath of their high justice in the streets; commanding the fortresses, making barricades at the least opposition to their will, domineering over the whole city as masters-a herd of power-intoxicated savages—and the commissary looking on, applauding, sanctioning their deeds, rubbing his hands with satisfaction, and approving them with the words, "Allez, mes enfans! vous faites bien!" Such scenes as these, carried to the utmost limits of anarchy and excess in Lyons, have been exhibited also in almost all the great towns of France, with all the effect of well-applied terrorism. There is scarcely one that has not similar outrages, from the violence of an excited mob, to lay to the charge of him who was set in authority over themto work his will, so said the letter of his instructions-but to preserve peace and order, in a country where convulsions, collisions, and commotions were so infinitely to be dreaded and avoided-so should his duty have told him. It ought to be said, at the same time, that the acknowledged authorities of the government were aided in their high revolutionary mission, and in the extraordinary means they employed in its execution, by less acknowledged agents, in the persons of emissaries from the violent ultra clubs of Paris; who, arrogating to themselves the right to the true expression of the only true feeling of Paris and consequently à fortiori of all France-racked the country with their manœuvres, their excitements to violence, their bullying threats and intimidations. Unacknowledged by government authority as they were, however, their missions were bestowed on them by the quondam friends and fellow-conspirators, under the former

reign of the Minister of the Interior; their expenses were supported by funds, supplied no one could say by what hand, although most might divine; their measures were evidently taken in accordance, and in perfectly good understanding, with the departmental commissary.

What, however, was the result? The very reverse from that intended by Messieurs les Commissaires and their supporter, the Minister of the Interior. They over-reached themselves, and worked the very effect they attempted to exterminate. Instead of subjugating the departments to their will of ultra-republicanism by the violence of terrorism, they almost roused the whole better feeling of the country, at first quietly disposed and resigned, against the very principles of republicanism in general. The sentiment at first accepted was soured and embittered; the discontent and aversion daily increased; and it was more than once openly affirmed that the departments were ready to revolt, and formed the design of marching upon Paris. That this subject was actually discussed in large, and not even secret meetings in the provincesand even in such as had been always considered ultra-liberal and democratic in their opinions, as parts of Normandy, for instance-admits of but little doubt; and this feeling, although it was never actually embodied in any living and active fact of resistance, may be taken as one example in support of the opinion, that the children may not always prove so submissive to the dictates of the mother, and may one day raise their voices and hold forth their hands to dispute her will. The open and general outbreak of the provinces, which was at one time expected, and was the common topic of conversation in Paris, was suppressed, however, by the influence of the betterthinking and more prudential men in the country. But the feeling of opposition and resistance did not fail to manifest itself in minor demonstrations. Expostulations were at first made against the tyranny and the inflammatory manœuvres of the government commissaries; then broke out angry remonstrances on the part of the bourgeoisie, backed by the better and quieter of the working-classes; and at last, when all these more legitimate

means failed, the populations of several of the larger towns rose against the provisional despot, who played the autocrat and the tyrant in the name of "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity."

The national guards took up arms to demand the revocation and the departure of the obnoxious commissary. The commissary, in opposition, acted the self-same part of which a despotic king has since been so violently accused by the republican journals. As Ferdinand of Naples is said to have excited the dregs of the populace, the lazzaroni, to aid him in a reactionary movement in his favour, so did even the republican commissary after the selfsame system. He caused the mob to be roused to his assistance, as to that of the only true democratic friend of the people; he called upon them to take up arms and combat in his defence: the lazzaroni mob of the departments was the weapon he wielded to overcome the resistance of the majority to his will. In most instances the recalcitrant part of the provincial populations prevailed. In several of the larger towns, as in Bordeaux, Bourges, and many others, the commissary was obliged to take to flight in some the palace of the little tyrant was stormed, he himself was made prisoner, and was taken to the railroad, and "packed off" back to that Paris which had sent him. In a very few instances only the influence of the commissary gained the day: in still less was he again returned, to be enforced upon the department from which he had been driven; and in one case he was sent back by the powers that were, only to be again ignominiously expelled.

In the department of the Ariège, at the town of Foix, a journal, founded under the auspices of the commissaries of the government, and professing the most violent ultra-republican doctrines, was publicly burnt by the magistrates and most influential persons of the place, to show their contempt and abhorrence of the principles and actions of the authority set over them. Other instances of the general opposition, either to the commissaries themselves or to the agents they had appointed and supported, on account of their violence, their tyrannical measures, and their anarchical principles, are too numerous to quote; and, generally speaking, the feeling was

SO

strong, that the Messieurs les Commissaires, or rather, les Citoyens Commissaires, were obliged to give way before the expression of popular indignation.

The departments then, for the first time, have begun to show that they are determined not to be treated as the mere humble serfs of the capital,— that they are resolved to have a will and an action of their own. The results have been such that, even among the staunch republicans in the provinces, and among those who look to the republic as the only form of government at present suitable to France, symptoms of a tendency to a federal system have indubitably sprung up,of a tendency, in fact, to that system in opposition to which, under the first revolution, the title of "one and indivisible," so little understood at the present day, so constantly repeated by the herd without any real meaning being attached to it,-was bestowed upon the republic. The fear of a powerfully organized resistance to the sacred principles of French republicanism, unity and indivisibility,-is, at this very time, one of the bugbears by which those in power are terrified and haunted. But, whether this fear be well founded or not, it suffices for the present purpose, to show that a disunited feeling exists to a great extent between the departments and the capital; and that, while on the one hand the former begin to show a disposition to resist the overweening influence and tyrannical importance of the former, on the other, a dread is beginning to be expressed of their growing discontent, and a suspicion is constantly expressed of their increasing tendency to reactionary principles, likely to prove eventually subversive to the republic. Among those "lookerson," who proverbially see the most of the game," there are some who, in their exceptional and impartial position as foreigners, are able to see expressed in letters from the provinces

66

66

curses, not loud, but deep," against "that detestable, unruly, and insolent Paris, that has made alone a hateful revolution, which it imposes on all France." It cannot, however, be said, at the same time, that any reactionary feeling against the republic itself, and a republican form of government, prevails in the country at large. That which is thought to be stigmatized by

the ultra party with the term of "reaction," appears, as yet, to be nothing but the acceptation of a republic based upon the principles of peace and order; but, at the same time, an opposition to all views and doctrines likely to produce disorder and anarchy. And yet still, in another sense, the feeling of the country at large cannot be said to be strictly republican: the true men" might be in vain sought except in the disorderly, tumultuous, excitable, and easily stirred populations of the great manufacturing towns.

Shortly after the appointment of the obnoxious commissaries, several causes arose to increase the discontent of the departments, not only among the ci-devant upper and middling classes, but among the lower classes, --particularly in the agricultural districts, and more especially among that peasant population that has so universally in France acquired a little property in land. One of these causes was the imposition of the new taxes. Under the former régime, France had been crushed down by the weight of its impositions. One of the first advantages of the republic was announced, in official proclamations, to consist in the removal of taxes, and in the enormous diminution of state expenses necessarily attendant upon a republican form of government. Already the country people looked to a release from the greater part of their obligations: the system of "no taxes at all," they thought, in their naïveté, was to follow; instead of which came very shortly the decree, begging the country for the loan of a certain proportion of the taxes for the ensuing year beforehand, in order to meet the deficiencies in the finances, followed up almost immediately by the more imperative ordinance, imposing the additional 45 per cent. in support of the increased, not diminished, expenses of the republican government. In many parts of the country the peasant population refused to pay this additional tax, or responded only to the demand with that equivocal answer, so characteristic of the French peasant, "We'll see about it." It nevertheless, however, refused to pay at the same time the rents of its landlords, upon the pretext that it was ruined by the revolution, and the

exactions of the republic. It was in vain that the government protested that these measures were necessitated by the financial dilapidations of the dethroned dynasty." Clear-sighted enough where their own interests are concerned, the French peasants in the provinces replied by denunciations of that odious Paris. Paris, they declared, had chosen to make for the nonce a revolution in which they had not aided, and which they had not desired; and then Paris turned to its own advantage alone the results of that revolution. It had imposed upon all France, by calling for resources from a country already drained, to be lavishly squandered in rewarding the idleness of its own tumultuous and unruly inhabitants among the working-classes, which it dreaded, by the establishment of its expensive socalled ateliers nationaux, and by paying fresh troops under the name of gardes mobiles,-when the standing army was already such a burden to the country,-for the sake of draining off and regularizing the worst dregs of its own population, and satisfying the caprices of a riotous Parisian mob, that chose to object to the presence of the old military force among it, while it accepted a new defensive and repressive force, in addition to the former, under a new title. Upon such questions, of vital importance to their own interests, the country people of the provinces were not disposed to listen to argument or reason; and in the discontent at the exorbitant exactions of the capital the jealousy of the departments towards Paris waxed stronger and stronger.

Another cause, which added greatly to the increasing apprehension and aversion was the preaching of the communist doctrines in Paris, upon the first establishment of republican principles, and the support apparently given to these wild and spoliating principles by certain members of the Provisional Government itself. If there be any feeling more alive than any other in the breast of the French peasant, it is that attached to the acquirement and the possession of landed property in however humble a form, be it but a small field or a tiny vineyard. If he has any hope, any ambition, any sentiment, which he thinks worth living for, it is the extension, by any and every