History of the French Revolution of 1848 (Paperback)

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1891. Excerpt: ... NOTE at page 46. "If there had, in the constituent assembly, been more statesmen than philosophers, it would have felt that an intermediate state, under the guardianship of a half-dethroned king, was impossible. The care and administration of conquests are not intrusted to the vanquished. In great crises an absolute party is the only sure one. The difficulty consists in knowing how to have recourse to these extreme measures at the right moment. "Let us say it boldly, history will, on some future day, say the same that we do. There was a moment when the constituent assembly had the right to choose between the monarchy and the republic, and should have chosen a republic. In that consisted the safety and legitimacy of the revolution. Failing in resolution, it failed in prudence. "But, say they, with Barnave, France is monarchical by geographical position as well as character, and a contest of mind was raised between monarchy and republics. Let us understand one another. "Geography is of no party. Rome and Carthage did not possess frontiers. Genoa and Venice possessed no territories- It is not the soil which determines the natures of the constitutions of people, it is the age. The geographical objection of Barnave fell to the ground the next year, before the prodigies achieved by France in 1792. She has shown whether a republic had unity and centralization enough to defend a continental nationality. Waves and mountains are the defences of the weak. Men are the frontiers of nations. Let us speak no more, then, of geography. It is not by geometricians, but by statesmen, that social constitutions are designed. *' Now, nations have two great instincts, which reveal to them the form which they have to take, according to the hour in their national existence to which they have arrived: the ins...