an indefinite period, they would be confused,
alarmed, and bewildered, to a degree which would render them incapable
of a real and intelligent choice. The people--the lower orders--may have
been, when Mr. Bagehot wrote, and probably are now, somewhat wiser and
better informed as to the real character of the Government--the actual
responsibility for particular measures--than their critic supposed. But
it is beyond doubt that the Queen's name is a great power. The law is
too mere an abstraction, the names of Ministers represent too much party
feeling, excite too much antagonism, to command the prompt obedience,
the loyal reverence, the enthusiastic support which is rendered to the
name of the Sovereign. In France and America a very different feeling
prevails.

Mr. Senior, than whom no Englishman of his day was more intimate with a
number of French statesmen of different parties, views and
character--than whom there was, perhaps, no cooler, closer, or more
constant observer of French politics--remarks that Frenchmen are always
weak and timid in upholding, daring, resolute, and even fierce in
resisting the powers that be. Confidence, enthusiasm, conviction, seem
in every case of insurrection and dangerous riot to be on the side of
the mob. The revolution of 1848 afforded very striking examples of this
contrast. The overthrow of Louis Philippe, deeply as the King himself
was disliked and despised, narrow as was the electorate, unpopular as
was the Ministry, was the act of a small minority. The Republic was
imposed upon France by a knot of reckless journalists and
semi-communistic dreamers, backed by the dreaded populace of Paris,
against the will of the peasantry who formed four-fifths of the voters,
and of the educated or semi-educated classes, amounting to one half of
the remaining fifth. Again and again was the Provisional
Government--though backed by all who had anything to lose, by all who
dreaded anarchy--on the point of overthrow, and saved only by
Lamartine's eloquence from the conspiracy of a few thousand desperadoes,
and the stormy passions of a mob that hardly knew what it wanted. The
Assembly itself was invaded and terrorized for several hours: the lives
of the leaders, to whom all France looked up with reverence, were in
imminent peril at the hands of a faction numerically insignificant. Only
in the terrible days of June did the National Guard, after four months
of distress and incessant panic, of daily and hour