o find the banner of the
monarchy frankly unfurled by M. Lambert de Ste.-Croix and scores of
other Conservatives, as they then called themselves, at the legislative
elections of that year. It did surprise me, however, to see the strength
of the support which they instantly received throughout the country. For
I believe the masses of the French people to be at heart monarchical,
less from any sentiment of loyalty at all either to the race of their
ancient kings or to the imperial dynasty, than because the experience of
the last century, to which, as I think very unwisely, the Republican
Government has appealed in what I cannot but call its rigmarole about
the 'Centennial of 1789,' has led them to associate with the idea of a
republic the ideas of instability and of anarchy, and with the idea of a
monarchy the ideas of stability and of order. Now the Government of the
Third Republic, first under M. Thiers and then under the Marechal-Duc of
Magenta, was so conducted from 1871 to 1877 as to shake this
association.

Under it Frenchmen had seen that a Republic might actually exist in
France for seven years without disturbing social order, interfering with
freedom of conscience, attacking the religion of the country, or wasting
its substance.

There were 'wars and rumours of wars' in the air in 1876. It was very
loudly whispered that Germany, alarmed by the rapid advances of France
towards a complete recovery of her national strength, meant suddenly and
savagely to strike at her; and that, unless the essentially national and
military Government of the Marechal-Duc was replaced by a Government
which would divert the resources of France largely into industrial,
commercial, and colonial adventures, a new invasion might at any moment
be feared. It ought to have been obvious that a Government which held in
its hand a balance of 98,000,000 francs was much less likely to be
wantonly attacked than a Government which meant to outrun its revenue.
With a declared balance of 98,000,000 francs to the good, France might
raise at the shortest notice 2,000,000,000 francs in a war loan. The
balance of the Marechal-Duc's Government was in fact a war-treasure, and
a war-treasure of that magnitude was a tolerably effectual guarantee of
peace. This ought, I say, to have been obvious; but it is the triumph of
demagogic skill to prevent a great people from seeing as a mass what is
perfectly plain to every man of them taken alone. Under the stress o