utions and coups that have ever
taken place in France is, that they never give the slightest particle
of real liberty to the people; and, what is equally surprising, the
people do not know what liberty is. It is a thing they talk about, and
paint over doorways, but further they go not. When, in 1848, a mob was
suffered to assume supreme authority, it might have been anticipated
that the very first thing they would do would be to turn the whole
police system about its business and destroy its records. No such
thing. The triumphant insurrectionists, complaining of tyranny, were
as tyrannical as anybody; they retained the obnoxious system of
passports, and kept up the usual routine of police administration,
spies and all. The truth appears to be, that the French cannot
comprehend the idea of social organisation without a minute machinery
of management and interference. Society in England, where people may
speak and do pretty much what they like, go here and go there without
leave asked, and set up any business anywhere as suits their fancy--is
anarchy, a chaos, according to French notions. Sir Francis inclines to
the belief that a system of government interference and regulation, as
in France, is an advantage, because it protects society against some
gross abuses--such as the indiscriminate sale of medicines, want of
sanitary arrangements, the open spectacle of vice, and so forth. True
this, in some respects, and we could wish for a little more vigour in
certain departments of our social policy; but in this, as in many
things, we have to make a choice of evils. Better, we think, allow
abuses to be corrected by the comparatively sluggish action of public
opinion, than accustom a people to have everything done for them,
every action regulated by laws and prefects of police. The account
given by Sir Francis of the manner in which the authority of the
police bears on common workmen, is only a version of what every
traveller speaks of with execration. Although we ourselves alluded to
the subject on a former occasion, we may recapitulate a few points
from the volume before us: 'Every workman or labouring boy is obliged,
all over France, to provide himself with a book termed _un livret_,
indorsed in Paris by a commissaire of police, and in other towns by
the mayor or his assistants, containing his description, name, age,
birthplace, profession, and the name of the master by whom he is
employed. In fact, no person, under a heavy fi