ough until he had outraged it first by ordering the
Church to remain obedient to Rome, and then by appealing to foreign
powers for protection. The emigrant nobles had stumbled over one
another in their haste to manifest their contempt for nationality by
throwing themselves into the arms of their own class in foreign lands.

Moreover, another work of the Revolution could not be undone. The
lands of both the emigrants and the Church had either been seized and
divided among the adherents of the new order, or else appropriated to
state uses. Restitution was out of the question, for the power of the
new owners was sufficient to destroy any one who should propose to
take away their possessions. This is a fact particularly to be
emphasized, because, making all allowances, the subsequent history of
France has been determined by the alliance of a landed peasantry with
the petty burghers of the cities and towns. What both have always
desired is a strong hand in government which assures their property
rights. Whenever any of the successive forms and methods has failed
its fate was doomed. In this temper of the masses, in the flight of
the ruling class, in the distemper of the radical democracy, a
constitutional monarchy was unthinkable. A presidential government on
the model of that devised and used by the United States was equally
impossible, because the French appear already to have had a
premonition or an instinct that a ripe experience of liberty was
essential to the working of such an institution. The student of the
revolutionary times will become aware how powerful the feeling already
was among the French that a single strong executive, elected by the
masses, would speedily turn into a tyrant. They have now a nominal
president; but his election is indirect, his office is representative,
not political, and his duties are like an impersonal, colorless
reflection of those performed by the English crown. The
constitution-makers simply could not fall back on an experience of
successful free government which did not exist. Absolute monarchy had
made gradual change impossible, for oppression dies only in
convulsions. Experience was in front, not behind, and must be gained
through suffering.

It was therefore a grim necessity which led the Thermidorians of the
Convention to try another political nostrum. What should it be? There
had always been a profound sense in France of her historic continuity
with Rome. Her system of jurispru