Constitutional Monarchy In France PDF Download

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1871 edition. Excerpt: ... to be as wise as the best statesmen, and to reduce politics to the mere consultation of the wishes of the majority, --such is the spirit which gains ground more and more, even in the country. I do not doubt but that this spirit is making progress every day, and that at the next elections it will show itself, wherever it may be in the ascendant, still more exigent and more intractable than it has been this year. Will, however, the republican party ever succeed in becoming the majority, and in securing the triumph of American institutions in France? I think not. It is essential to that party to be always in the minority. If they were finally to effect a social revolution, they might create new classes, but these classes would become monarchical the moment they became wealthy. The most pressing interests of France, the character of her mind, her good qualities and her defects, make royalty a necessity to her. The very moment the radical party shall have overturned a monarchy, the journalists, the literary men, the artists, the men of intellect, the men of the world, the women, will conspire together to establish another; for the monarchy corresponds to deeply-felt needs of the nation. Our amiability alone suffices to make us bad republicans. The charming exaggerations of the old French politeness, the courtesy which "places us at the feet" of those with whom we have intercourse, is the very opposite of that stiff, rough, dry manner which the ever-present consciousness of his rights gives to the democrat. France excels only in the exquisite; she loves only what is elegant; she can only be aristocratic. We are a race of gentlemen; our ideal has been created by gentlemen, not, like that of America, by honest citizens and serious men of...