Exposition at Paris--so much, indeed, that I have had the obvious
incongruity of selecting for the celebration of the French Revolution by
a French Republic the centennial of a year in which no French Republic
existed, accounted for to me by a French Republican on the express
ground that the legislative elections were fixed for 1889! There may
have been some truth in this. For nothing could be more preposterous
than the pretext alleged for the selection by the French Government.

This or that thing which occurred at a particular time in a particular
year may reasonably be made the occasion of a centennial or a
semi-centennial celebration. But how is anybody to fix and celebrate the
'centennial' of a set of notions called 'the principles of 1789'?

In the United States we have celebrated the 'Centennial' of the
Declaration of Independence, and the Centennial of the first
Inauguration of the first President.

Did the French Government intend to invite the monarchies of Europe to
celebrate the destruction by a mob of the Bastille on July 14, 1789?
Hardly, I suppose! Or the Convocation of the States-General at
Versailles on May 5, 1789? Certainly not--for the States-General were
convoked, not under the 'principles of 1789,' but in conformity with an
ancient usage and custom of the French monarchy.

What are the 'principles of 1789'?

And why should anybody in or out of France celebrate them?

If by 'the principles of 1789' we are to understand the principles of
modern constitutional government--and I know no other intelligible
interpretation of the phrase--there is certainly no reason why anybody
out of France should particularly concern himself with celebrating the
adoption of these principles in France any more than with celebrating
the adoption of them in England, or the United States, or Germany, or
Spain, or Italy. The principles of modern constitutional government were
certainly not intelligently adopted, and certainly not loyally carried
out in France, by any of the governments which tumbled over one another
in rapid succession in that distracted country between 1789 and 1815.
Have they been intelligently adopted and loyally carried out in that
distracted country to-day? That is a question, I think, not hastily to
be answered!

To ask the people of England, of the United States, of Germany, of
Spain, of Italy, to unite in celebrating the principles of modern
constitutional government, under the name of the 'p