re divided
between Jerome the father and Victor the son. The Royalists are united.
The France of Henri IV. and of Charles X. is represented to-day by the
grandson of Louis Philippe. The _vox Dei_ and the _vox Populi_ meet in
him as they met in the Prince of Orange when England, forty years after
the criminal catastrophe of 1649, was driven by the flight of James II.
into seating William and Mary, the grandson and the granddaughter of
Charles I., upon the abdicated throne.

How can an independent Executive ever be restored in France excepting in
the person of Philippe VII.? Had the Revolution of 1830 never occurred
he would now by the ancient law of succession be King of France and
Navarre. Had the Revolution of 1848 never occurred he would now be King
of the French under the Charter. If the era of revolutions is ever to be
closed in France, must it not be by an Executive who shall be at once
King of France and King of the French--King of France, as representing
the historic growth into greatness and unity of the French nation; King
of the French, as representing the personal liberties and the private
rights of every citizen of the French commonwealth?

* * * * *

FRANCE AND THE REPUBLIC

CHAPTER I

IN THE PAS-DE-CALAIS

CALAIS

The men who, in 1790, brought about the formal division of France into
departments, no doubt thereby facilitated the ephemeral transformation,
in September 1792, of the ancient French monarchy into a French
republic, 'one and indivisible.' But they also put their improvised
republic thereby at the mercy of the marvellous Italian who blew its
flimsy framework into shreds with his cannon in October 1795.

In working out what George Sand calls 'the great practical joke' of the
First Consulate, and the formidable reality of the Empire, Napoleon
found, ready-fashioned to his hand and undamaged by the republican
tinkers, a system of administration essentially despotic. This system
did for him what Charlemagne did for himself when he got rid of the
tribal dukes of the Merovingian epoch, and, as Gneist and Sir Robert
Morier have shown, gathered into his own control the four unities which
make up the unity of the State--the military, the police, the judiciary,
and the finances. The counts of Charlemagne, removable at his pleasure,
with no root in their _comitatus_ save his sovereign will, were the true
prototypes of the modern French prefect. If the o