Deputies, issued the ordinances of St. Cloud, suspending the
liberty of the press and dissolving the Legislature. Paris immediately
broke out into insurrection, and the King was forced to abdicate. The
crown was offered to Louis Philippe, and a second attempt at
constitutional monarchy was made. But France was too divided by her
unfortunate legacy of faction to maintain a continuous policy. The
Legitimists, the Republicans, and the Bonapartists were all awaiting
their opportunity. In 1848 the second revolution broke out in Paris; the
king fled to England, and a republic was again tried. But the
imperialist idea revived when Louis Napoleon was elected President. In
1851 he carried out his famous _coup d'etat,_ and again the Constitution
was swept away. In the following year he was accepted as Emperor by an
almost unanimous vote. Thus France again elected to be ruled by an
irresponsible head. The Third Empire ended with the capture of Napoleon
III. at Sedan in 1870, and since then France has carried on her third
experiment in republicanism. But still the fatal defect of
disorganization retards her progress; the Legislature is still split up
into contending factions, and in consequence it has been found
impossible to maintain a strong executive. Occasionally the factions
sink their differences for a time when their patriotism is appealed to,
as they have agreed to do during the currency of the present Exhibition,
but it is abundantly evident that France can never be well governed
till the people are able to organize two coherent parties. There is
ground for hope that the monarchical and imperialist ideas are
declining, and that the people are settling down to the conviction that
there is nothing left but the republic. What makes recovery difficult is
that the national character has been affected by the continual strife in
the direction of excitability and desire for change.

Those who wish to understand the forces which brought about the
different changes and revolutions, traced by one who has grasped their
meaning, should read the account in the first volume of Mr. Bradford's
"Lesson of Popular Government." His conclusion only need be quoted
here:--

As has been said, that which constitutes the strength of the
English. Government, that which has made up its history for the
last two hundred years, is the growth and continuity of two solid
and coherent parties. Occasionally they have wavered when availa