Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 | Page 8

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.

Those who recollect the political literature of the years that passed
between the Revolution of February and the commencement of those
disputes which eventuated in the Russian War must blush for humanity.
Writers of every class set themselves about the work of exterminating
Agrarianism in France. Grave arguments, pathetic appeals, and lively
ridicule were all made use of to drive off enemies of whose coming
upon Europe there was no more danger than of a return of the Teutones
and the Cimbri. Had the arguments and adjurations of the clever men
who waged war on the Agrarians been addressed to the dust of the
Teutones whom Marius exterminated in Provence, they could not have
been more completely thrown away than they were. Some of these men,
however, were less distinguished for cleverness than for malignity, and
shrieked for blood and the display of brute force in terms that would
have done dishonor even to a St. Bartholomew assassin or