e monarchies, it annihilates the hope of obtaining them; its sole
chance of escape from siege, famine, and bombardment, is in the
immediate and impassioned sympathy of the provinces; and it revives
all the grudges which the provinces have long sullenly felt against
the domineering pretensions of the capital, and invokes the rural
populations, which comprise the pith and sinew of armies, in the name
of men whom I verily believe they detest still more than they do the
Prussians. Victor, it is enough to make one despair of his country! All
beyond the hour seems anarchy and ruin."

"Not so!" exclaimed De Mauleon. "Everything comes to him who knows how
to wait. The Empire is destroyed; the usurpation that follows it has
no roots. It will but serve to expedite the establishment of such a
condition as we have meditated and planned--a constitution adapted to
our age and our people, not based wholly on untried experiments, taking
the best from nations that do not allow Freedom and Order to be the
sport of any popular breeze. From the American Republic we must borrow
the only safeguards against the fickleness of the universal suffrage
which, though it was madness to concede in any ancient community, once
conceded cannot be safely abolished,--viz., the salutary law that no
article of the Constitution, once settled, can be altered without the
consent of two-thirds of the legislative body. By this law we insure
permanence, and that concomitant love for institutions which is
engendered by time and custom. Secondly, the formation of a senate on
such principles as may secure to it in all times of danger a confidence
and respect which counteract in public opinion the rashness and heat of
the popular assembly. On what principles that senate should be formed,
with what functions invested, what share of the executive--especially
in foreign affairs, declarations of war, or treaties of peace--should
be accorded to it, will no doubt need the most deliberate care of the
ablest minds. But a senate I thus sketch has alone rescued America from
the rashness of counsel incident to a democratic Chamber; and it is
still more essential to France, with still more favourable elements for
its creation. From England we must borrow the great principle that has
alone saved her from revolution--that the head of the State can do
no wrong. He leads no armies, he presides over no Cabinet. All
responsibility rests with his advisers; and where we upset a dynasty,