of the Carbonari seem to have
been precisely calculated for these lower strata. These were, he had
already told us himself, "to have a gun and fifty cartridges, to be
ready to devote one's-self, and to obey blindly the orders of unknown
leaders."--(P. 101.)

When we describe M. Louis Blanc as a democrat, it is rather for want of
a better and more accurate title, than because this exactly describes
him. A democrat is generally understood to be one who has a large faith
in the lowest class of the people, such as they really exist; our author
has a faith only in the future of this class. He does not fail to give
vent, when the occasion prompts him, to his compassion or contempt for
the ignorant mass of mankind. The democracy he worships is one to be
established in some distant age, by a people very different, and living
under some modification of the law of property, which he has not thought
fit to explain. It is a democracy which has nothing distinct but its
hatreds--a shadowy monster, peculiarly disagreeable to deal with. Our
historian writes with overflowing gall against kings, against
aristocracies, against the middle class. You would say he is a stanch
republican, and that the people are to be his depositaries of power. But
no; a lamentation, which escapes him from time to time--as bitter as any
which Tory or Legitimist would utter--over the _blindness_ of the
people, their passions and their ignorance, contradicts this conclusion.
Where is the power, and in whom lodged, that M. Louis Blanc would
willingly obey, or see obeyed? It exists nowhere. Society is corrupt, is
chaotic; nor can it, by any organ it possesses, exercise a sound or
rational power. A new era must arise--how, whence, when, we are not
instructed.

It is the peculiar characteristic of French democracy, that there is
always mixed up with it the principle, more or less distinctly avowed, of
the community of goods. Perhaps the vagueness we complain of in M. Louis
Blanc, is dictated by mere prudence; perhaps there is no vagueness to the
eye of a propagandist. One sentiment of French democracy he certainly
expresses with sufficient hardihood. It is not often we meet with the
principle of intervention between state and state, asserted in these days
with so much boldness as in the following passage:--"Men have stigmatized
the war in Spain, calling the principle of intervention an oppressive
principle. Puerile accusation! All people are brothers, and all
rev