ir
faith and trust, France would ere this have been plunged into
convulsions through the mutual jealousies and hostilities of the
factions who vaunt themselves collectively the party of Order; they have
been withheld from cutting each other's throats by the calm, determined,
watchful, intrepid attitude of the calumniated Democracy.

The law of the 31st May still stands on the statute-book, and I
apprehend is destined to remain (though many who are better informed are
sanguine that it will be repealed before the next Presidential
Election), but the Republic will endure and its Constitution cannot be
overthrown. All the Bourbonists, Orleanists, and Bonapartists in the
Assembly combined are insufficient to change the Constitution legally;
and if a bare majority sufficed for that purpose (instead of
three-fourths), they could not to-day command a working majority for any
practical measure of Revision. It is easy to club their votes and
vaguely declare _some_ change necessary--but _what_ change? A Bourbon
Restoration? An Orleans Middle-Class Royalty? A Napoleonic Empire? For
no one of these can a majority even of this Reaectionist Assembly be
obtained. What, then, is their chance with the People?

As to the signing of Petitions for Revision, that is easily understood.
The Prefect, the Mayor, &c., of a locality readily procure the
signatures of all the Government _employes_ and hangers-on, who
constitute an immense army in France; the great manufacturers circulate
the petitions among their workmen, and most of them sign, not choosing
to risk their masters' displeasure for a mere name more or less to an
unmeaning paper. But the plotters know perfectly well that the People
are _not_ for Revision in _their_ sense of the word; if they did not
fear this, they would restore Universal Suffrage. By clinging with
desperate tenacity to the Restrictive law of May 31st, they virtually
confess that their hopes of success involve the continued exclusion of
Three Millions of adult Frenchmen from the Registry of Voters. When they
prate, therefore, of _the people's_ desire for Revision, the Republican
retort is ready and conclusive--"Repeal the law of May 31st, and we can
then tell what the people really desire. But so long as you maintain
that law, you confess that you dare not abide the verdict of the whole
People. You appeal to a Jury which you have packed--one whose right to
try this question we utterly deny. Restore Universal Suffrage,