rudence blinded him. The guide of human life led him astray. A silent
revolution in the moral world preceded the political, and prepared it.
It became of more importance than ever what examples were given, and
what measures were adopted. Their causes no longer lurked in the
recesses of cabinets, or in the private conspiracies of the factious.
They were no longer to be controlled by the force and influence of the
grandees, who formerly had been able to stir up troubles by their
discontents, and to quiet them by their corruption. The chain of
subordination, even in cabal and sedition, was broken in its most
important links. It was no longer the great and the populace. Other
interests were formed, other dependencies, other connexions, other
communications. The middle classes had swelled far beyond their former
proportion. Like whatever is the most effectively rich and great in
society, these classes became the seat of all the active politics; and
the preponderating weight to decide on them. There were all the
energies by which fortune is acquired; there the consequence of their
success. There were all the talents which assert their pretensions,
and are impatient of the place which settled society prescribes to
them. These descriptions had got between the great and the populace;
and the influence on the lower classes was with them. The spirit of
ambition had taken possession of this class as violently as ever it
had done of any other. They felt the importance of this situation. The
correspondence of the monied and the mercantile world, the literary
intercourse of academies, but, above all, the press, of which they
had in a manner entire possession, made a kind of electric
communication everywhere. The press in reality has made every
government, in its spirit, almost democratic. Without it the great,
the first movements in this Revolution could not, perhaps, have been
given. But the spirit of ambition, now for the first time connected
with the spirit of speculation, was not to be restrained at will.
There was no longer any means of arresting a principle in its course.
When Louis XVI., under the influence of the enemies to monarchy, meant
to found but one republic, he set up two. When he meant to take away
half the crown of his neighbour, he lost the whole of his own. Louis
XVI. could not with impunity countenance a new republic: yet between
his throne and that dangerous lodgment for an enemy, which he had
erected, he had the