g only for personal
security in repose, and called upon hourly to deal with a stubborn and
restless people, who had suddenly passed from the rugged shocks of
revolution and war to the difficult exercise of liberty.

Under the prolonged influence of this liberty, such a Government,
without obstinate prejudices, and disposed to follow public opinion when
clearly expressed, might have corrected while strengthening itself, and
from day to day have become more competent to its task. But this
required time and the concurrence of the country. The country,
discontented and unsettled, neither knew how to wait nor assist. Of all
the knowledge necessary to a free people, the most essential point is to
learn how to bear what displeases them, that they may preserve the
advantages they possess, and acquire those they desire.

There has been much discussion as to what plots and conspirators
overthrew the Bourbons, and brought back Napoleon, on the 20th of March,
1815,--a question of inferior importance, and interesting only as an
historical curiosity. It is certain that from 1814 to 1815 there
existed in the army and with the remnants of the Revolution, amongst
generals and conventionalists, many plans and secret practices against
the Restoration, and in favour of a new Government,--either the Empire,
a regency, the Duke of Orleans, or a republic. Marshal Davoust promised
his support to the Imperial party, and Fouche offered his to all. But if
Napoleon had remained motionless at the island of Elba, these
revolutionary projects would, in all probability, have successively
failed, as did those of the Generals d'Erlon, Lallemand, and Lefevre
Desnouettes, even so late as the month of March. The fatuity of the
contrivers of conspiracy is incalculable; and when the event seems to
justify them, they attribute to themselves the result which has been
achieved by mightier and much more complicated causes than their
machinations. It was Napoleon alone who dethroned the Bourbons in 1815,
by calling up, in his own person, the fanatical devotion of the army,
and the revolutionary instincts of the popular masses.

However tottering might be the monarchy lately restored, it required
that great man and a combination of these great social powers to subvert
it. Stupefied and intimidated, France left events to their course,
without opposition or confidence. Napoleon adopted this opinion, with
his admirable penetration:--"They allowed me to arrive," he