necessary in a government, and without them every government is a despotism; but no government can stand if organized on two fundamentally irreconcilable principles. This dualism is as objectionable in politics as in religion; and its objectionable character in the latter is strikingly displayed by the whole history of Protestantism. Diversity may be introduced into the organization, and must be, but it must be a diversity with unity for its basis. The compromise that is required cannot be a compromise of principle, but must take place in a sphere that leaves to each party for itself its own principles, and therefore must be a compromise in the order of facts, not in the order of principles. The monarchists can without any compromise of principle accept and support a republican form of government for France, as they have done for the last three years. The republicans can of course do the same. The compromise must be, then, for each to support the republic as a fact, and as a legal fact, the monarchist foregoing the attempt to carry out into fact his monarchical preferences, and the republican forbearing to attempt to make the republic the embodiment of his theory of popular sovereignty, not necessary to the establishment or free and salutary working of the republic, and necessary at all only as a condition of revolutionizing or overthrowing it. The monarchists must concede the republicans the republican form of government, and with that the republicans must be satisfied, although the republic be not founded on their doctrine of the "sacred right of insurrection," and they must be held, and, if need be, forced to obey it, as they were to obey the monarchy. This is the only compromise that can be honorably made. The monarchists give up monarchy for the sake of peace, and the republicans get what they pretended to want, a republic, and must in turn give up the attempt to realize anarchical theories. But as they will never do this willingly, they must be compelled to do it, and till they are completely subdued, they must not be intrusted with power, although the particular individual they put forward as a candidate for popular suffrage should be personally unexceptionable.

We hope our friends in France will not deem us impertinent in these remarks, or if we express our conviction that their aim should be to preserve, for the present at least, the princely republic; for we fear that, if any other than Louis Napoleon is chosen as its chief at the next

presidential election, disastrous consequences will follow. If it is resolved to maintain the republican order, it will be exceedingly dangerous to change the person of its present chief before it is more perfectly consolidated. We have no prejudices in favor of the Bonapartists, and what prejudices we have are on the side of the legitimists. Our own political principles would lead us to wish Henry V. to be king, to wish the reëstablishment of legitimate royalty in France, if we believed the thing practicable; but we go on the supposition that that is impracticable, and that the long line of the kings of France and kings of the French ended with Louis Philippe. On this supposition, Louis Napoleon seems to us now, even more than in 1848, the most proper person for president of the republic. He may have had visions of an imperial restoration, but if so, he appears to entertain them no longer. As far as we can discover from his messages, and, what is more to the purpose, his acts, he has accepted the republic in good faith, with a firm resolution, so far as depends on him, to render it successful. He has nobly redeemed the promises he made on assuming the reigns of government, and has manifested eminent abil ity as well as loyal intentions; and if now and then we have discovered a Gallican reminiscence in his administration, he has as yet been found on the side of religion, and been surpassed by no sovereign in Europe in yielding what is due to the church, or in his respect and submission to the Holy See.

The revolutions of 1848 had even more at heart the destruction of the church than the abolition of monarchy, and the loud wail that is heard over the fall of Mazzini and his Roman republic is far more anti-Catholic than antimonarchical. But these revolutions have been overruled and made to redound to the glory of the church against. whom they were chiefly designed, and in no country more so than in France. Never since Charlemagne has the church in France been more free than under the administration of Louis Napoleon. The legitimate kings of France seldom permitted the church in their dominions to manage her own affairs in her own way, and their ostentatious protection of her was often, nay, generally, only her enslavement to the temporal power. Not under the empire certainly, not under Louis XVIII., not under Charles X., nor under Louis Philippe, was there any thing ap proaching the respect to the church by the government that

has been paid her by the republic, since the terrible days of June, 1848. It may be policy on the part of the president, but if so it is a wise and just policy, and such as marks the Christian statesman. But we believe it something more than policy, and we are not surprised that a man whose life has been checkered like that of Louis Bonaparte, and the greater part of which has been passed in exile or in prison, should feel the need of religion for his own support, as well as for the support of the state. He has shown his respect for religion, not only in his relations with the Holy See, but in the support he has given to the law on instruction, a concession to the church, not indeed of all that her friends had the right to demand, but of more than any other modern government has conceded, unless it be that of the young emperor of Austria, and more than under the late monarchy any friend of the freedom of education from the university monopoly ever thought of asking, and perhaps as much as, in the present state of things, it is prudent to concede. Moderation in removing abuses is necessary lest the attempted reform fail, and matters be made worse than before.

The Catholic party in France, it strikes us, should ask themselves very seriously whether religion is not now doing well, and whether it would not be more likely to lose than to gain by the restoration of monarchy, with its old Gallican traditions, traditions which no government will surrender unless forced to do so in order to sustain itself, and which no Bourbon on the throne of France can be forced to surrender, so long as a large minority of France are not Catholic, and a large majority of her statesmen, as statesmen are prone to be, are Gallican. In a country where the majority are Catholics, the government, if it rests on popular suffrage, will be pretty sure to respect the freedom of the church. A republican government, accepted and supported by the majority, will hardly oppress, for it will have little motive to oppress, the religion of the majority. It was, therefore, with great pleasure that we saw the bishops and clergy of France expressing, with singular frankness and unanimity, their adhesion to the republic. The church is doing well now, and her friends have comparatively little to complain of,-less than almost everywhere else. Will they have less under a king who will study only to enlarge the sphere of the temporal at the expense of the spiritual authority? Why, then, seek a change? Why run the risk

of losing what is obtained, in the uncertain attempt to get more? We hear good accounts of the Count de Chambord, and we doubt not his good intentions; but he is heir to the prejudices and traditions, as well as to the rights, of his family, and the promises of a prince in exile are not precisely the acts of a king firmly seated upon his throne.

The difficulty in the way of the reëlection of Prince Napoleon is that the constitution renders him ineligible for a second term, till after an interval of some years; but there is time enough to amend the constitution, and it ought to be amended in that particular, or at least so as to prolong the term of office beyond three years, to eight or ten. Our experience in the United States may not be in favor of reeligibility, but it proves clearly that four years are too short a term for a president to adopt and consolidate any policy, and that a change of administration every four years must very soon unsettle every thing. The restriction in the French constitution, as well as the short term of office ordained by ours, betrays the insane jealousy, inherited from the old English Whigs, which is entertained by modern republicans of the executive power. No government is good for any thing without an efficient executive, and where, as in France, the executive is responsible, and is restricted in great part to the execution of laws made by an independent legislature, elected for a short term of years, the power of the executive is more likely to be too little than too great. Moreover, no large and populous country can long survive the repeated shocks which it must receive from the election of a president with extensive patronage every four years. If we do not lengthen the presidential term to eight or ten years, we Americans shall soon find the whole political business of the country resolving itself, directly or indirectly, into president-making. No harm can come, but great good must surely come, to France from amending her constitution so as to prolong to eight or ten years the presidential term of office; and she can now do it, though after a few years she will find it for ever too late.

We are aware that some of our French friends object to prolonging the term of office of the present incumbent, lest he attempt to get himself proclaimed emperor. But is this fear warranted? Is it generous? Louis Napoleon has disclaimed all pretensions as the heir of his uncle; he has sworn to maintain the republican constitution; and it is an

undeniable fact, that he has thus far observed with scrupulous fidelity his oath of office, and has labored to protect the republic alike against the anarchical attempts of the socialists, and the movements of the royalists for a restoration of fallen monarchy. What right has any one to distrust his intentions? For our part, we believe him resolved to support the republic, and we would rather trust the fate of France in his hands, with legislative power in the hands of the party of order, than, in the present state of opinion, to run the risk of a change in any direction.

But it is time to close. It may be said, that, in the whole of this article, we have been volunteering opinions on matters which only remotely concern us, and on which we can, of course, have only imperfect information. We cannot deny that there is truth in the charge; but the opinion of a disinterested foreigner, who takes a deep interest in French politics, who has no republican prejudices, although a supporter of republican government, and who looks at all political questions mainly in their bearing on religion and morals, perhaps may not be wholly without interest, nor wholly destitute of value, to French statesmen. We offer them in no intermeddlesome spirit, and in no arrogant tone, though we freely and frankly express them. France is the great central power of Europe, and, with the exception of Austria, the only great European power to which the Catholic in other countries can turn with affection and hope. Austria has done and is doing well, and the present emperor bids fair to give additional lustre to the illustrious house of Habsburg, besides removing the stain from its escutcheon caused by the half-insane Joseph II. But France exerts, and must continue to exert, a powerful influence on all southern and western Europe, and on our own country in particular. She is as it were the missionary nation of the world, and it is not a matter of indifference to other nations whether she preaches the true gospel, or another. Her doctrines have immense weight in England; they reign supreme in this country; Germany reaches us only through France, and from France we import not only our fashions, but our tastes, our principles, our ideas, our philosophy, and our literature. In France is the fountain whose streams flow either to fertilize or to deluge our land. This must be our apology for venturing to speak of French politics very much as if they were our own. We have spoken kindly, in love of that beautiful country, with which, though we have never seen