and talent, gave them a decided
superiority, whilst the Republicans were still a weak minority. In a few
months, to all appearance, everything was completely changed. Talent,
respectability, authority, and influence, were still on the side of the
constitutional reformers. But, in the meantime, the Red Republic had
gained the command of numbers. How this came to pass it may be well now to
enquire.

In every great community there are many people who have no fixed
principles in politics, and others, perhaps, not less numerous, who have
no political principles at all. Both these classes of people depend
entirety on other men for the sentiments and opinions by which, at any
given moment, they shall be guided. Such people were sufficiently numerous
at Rome and the other cities and provinces of Italy. Demagogues,
therefore, who were not without ability and possessed fluency of speech,
found it no very difficult task to fashion as they had a mind, for these
classes of citizens, any amount of political principles and _programmes_.
Those even who were fairly imbued with constitutional ideas, but whose
minds were not wholly decided, the leaders of the Red Republic endeavored,
and not without success, to gain to their side, by persuading them to
compromise, as regarded certain points, to modify their opinions on
others, change their designations, enter into coalitions, and adopt such
ingenious arrangements as were proposed to them. Thus, by degrees, and as
was only to be expected in such circumstances, the ultra-radicals
succeeded but too well in causing the most extravagant political notions
to prevail among the masses. As fate would have it, the revolution in
France of February, 1848, which brought to an end the constitutional
monarchy, afforded no slight aid and encouragement to the Red Republic of
Italy. The men of this party might have understood, on reflection, to what
extreme peril France became exposed, when she preferred brute force to
constitutional proceeding, and tore down by violence a system which was,
in many respects, good; and which, inasmuch as it was a constitution,
could in due time have been extended and improved, receiving, as new wants
arose, and wisdom and experience warranted, new developments, new
adaptations, and daily increasing excellence. The constitutional element
once removed, there was no medium between and safeguard against
absolutism; on the one hand, and on the other anarchy, or the reign of
viol