CARLYLE'S LATTER DAY PAMPHLETS.

 We publish below several extracts from a work intituled ' Latter Day Pamphlets,' edited by Thomas Carlyle of London, along with certain remarks of the London Times of 26th December.

' In the days that are now passing over us even fools are arrested to ask the meaning of them ; few of the generations of men have seen more impressive days. Days of endless calamity, disruption, dislocation, confusion worse confounded ; if they are not days of endless hope too, then they are days of utter despair. For it is not a small hope that will suffice, the ruin being clearly, either in action or in prospect, universal. There must be a new world if there is to be any world at all ! That human things in our Europe can ever return to the old sorry routine, and proceed with any steadiness or continuance there— this small hope is not now a tenable one. These days of universal death must be days of universal new birth, if the ruin is not to be total and final. It is a time to make the dullest man consider and ask himself,— Whence he came ? Whither he is bound ?— a veritable ' New Era,' to the foolish as well as to the wise.'

 What Mr. Carlyle had in his mind when he wrote thus, presently appears. It was the outbreak of Republicanism in 1848. Well might any but a very cool observer of that astonishing movement imagine that ' Doomsday was come ; ' that ' since the irruption of the northern barbarians there had been nothing like it ; ' and that ' the state everywhere throughout Europe had coughed its last in street musketry.' But we now see the breadth and depth of the movement, and perceive that it was immeasurably inferior in importance and significance to several which have occurred since the overthrow of the Roman Empire — far below the first French Revolution, further still below the Reformation. The fact was that Europe had been vaccinated by the Jacobins, and would not take Sansculottism again. A second advent of ' the Mountain ' was a thing morally impossible. And now that the smoke of the barricades has cleared away we see clearly that the movement was confined to the capitals or great cities, and that even there it was a revolt rather than a revolution. No great political, much less any great social change, has been produced. 

There has been no overthrow of a privileged class or substitution of a free for an arbitrary government, such as resulted from the first French revolution. Of the monarchs that were temporarily expelled, the majority have either returned to their seats of government in person, or devolved their power, diminished only in name, to a younger and more vigorous successor. One monarchy alone has been completely overthrown ; and in this instance a constitutional King has been followed by an unconstitutional and even absolute President. The ' State ' has not 'coughed its last,' and Doomsday is indefinitely adjourned.

 So again, far from its being impossible that ' things in our Europe can ever return to the old sorry routine,' there is but too much reason to apprehend that by a natural though lamentable reaction they will re turn into an an older and sorrier routine than ever. The first effect of the insurrection has been a great increase in the force of standing armies— an element which certainly is not favourable to political progress. The next effect may, perhaps, be a European war, which, whatever may be its result, is sure to suspend all liberal movements, to exalt the power of the sword, and to impoverish and crush the people. And what is more important still, absolutism both civil and religious, is everywhere deriving dangerous strength from the natural fears of the peaceable and the rich. France is an evident instance. Germany is equally so. In Italy a winking Madonna consecrates the victory of a reinstated Pope. Even in England men who have windows and tills to guard begin to talk too lightly of their liberty ; and the greatest theological movement of the day, which Mr. Carlyle, seeing only from a distance, takes for the smallest, is radically absolutist in civil matters as well as in spiritual. Every where the tide is running against freedom.

 Of the social evils of England Mr. Carlyle takes a view no less exaggerated than his view of the political situation of Europe : —

 ' Between our black West Indies and our white Ireland, between these two extremes of lazy refusal to work and of famishing inability to find any work, what a world have we made of it with our fierce Mammon worships and our benevolent philanderings, and idle godless nonsenses of one kind and another! Supply and demand — Leave it alone; — Voluntary principle,— Time will mend it: — 'till British industrial existence seems fast becoming one huge prison swamp of reeking pestilence physical and moral ; a  hideous living Golgotha of souls and bodies buried alive ; such a Curtius' gulf, communicating with the  nether deeps, as the sun never saw till now.' Those scenes, which the Morning Chronicle is bringing home to all minds of men — thanks to it for service such as newspapers have seldom done — ought to excite unspeakable reflections in every mind. Thirty thousand outcast needlewomen working themselves swiftly to death ; three million paupers rotting in forced idleness, helping said needlewomen to die ; these are but items in the sad ledger of despair.'

 We do not wish the prophet to prophesy smooth things to us; but we wish him to prophesy true things ; otherwise he will produce either incredulity, despair, or a vague impression that something extraordinary must be done— which is very fatal to all practical reform. To write so wildly on the subject is just the way to relax real effort and increase the amount of indolent sentimentalism and ineffectual rhetoric. And surely, for a social philosopher, who is bound to base his conclusions upon facts, Mr. Carlyle has the strangest mode of obtaining his information. His notions of the industrial classes, generally, seem to be derived from certain highly seasoned pictures of the very worst class of a metropolis ; that is, the very cesspool of civilized society. Is this sensible ? And might it not be well to look a little into ' Mac-Crowdy's ' statistics and the ' Dismal Science'? Of the existence of the ' thirty thousand outcast needle women ' we yet seek proof. Pauperism is a terrible evil— one which deserves and is receiving the best attention of our best men. If Mr. Carlyle has anything practical to say upon the subject, he will be gladly heard ; but before he can say anything practical he must learn the cause of the evil which is to he cured. It does not arise from 'benevolent philanderings, and idle godless nonsenses,' nor from 'mammon-worship' either; but from certain causes naturally incident to society in an old and overpeopled country, which it is the province of the ' Dismal Science ' to investigate and correct. And as to the Morning Chronicle reports, and the 30,000 needlewomen, Mr. Carlyle would here be nearer the mark if he directed the sword of his satire against luxury, which draws all this vice and misery in its train. But luxury is a disease of the body social, and Mr. Carlyle's fixed faith and fixed idea is that, all our evils result from want of intellect in the head.

 The two offices upon which Mr. Carlyle especially fixes are the Foreign and the Colonial. And he is right here. But the reasons which he gives are wrong. The reason why these offices are in worse odour than the rest, is not that they are particularly deep in 'owl-droppings,' or that the clerks in them are not men of genius and ' brothers of the radiances and the lightnings,' or that the Colonial-office does not leave the colonies alone and turn its undivided attention to the Irish, or that the Foreign-office does not take up the potato rot and cease to 'protocol' and mix itself in the affairs of Europe. The Colonial-office is in bad odour, partly owing to the spirit which at present rules it, partly from the inherent difficulty of governing distant dependencies, especially when the Government is representative and the dependencies are not represented. And the Foreign-office is in bad odour, partly and principally because Lord Palmerston is Foreign Minister, and partly because just now there is a great call for economy, and people are very anxious to find good reasons for putting down ambassadors.

 The Colonial-office Mr. Carlyle proposes to reform by turning it to its proper function of organizing Irish labour. Under the Foreign-office he proposes, with some witty politicians, to ' put a live coal.' We have had no continental interests worth caring for since the time of Oliver Cromwell. As we have certain cottons and hardwares to sell, and Portugal oranges to buy, we may need ' some kind of consul.' Ambassadors are to be 'sent on great occasions ; otherwise we may correspond with foreign Potentates through the cheap medium of the penny post. This scheme for reforming the Foreign-office is not original ; but the scheme for reforming the Colonial-office quite makes amends.

 The task of reforming Downing-street in general was destined by Mr. Carlyle for our lost Sir Robert Peel. But who that ever studied the character of that lamented statesman can hear without a smile of his 'privately resolving to go one day into that stable of King Augis (Augeas) which appals human hearts, so rich is it high piled with the droppings of 200 years, and, Hercules-like, to load 1000 night waggons from it, and turn running water into it, and swash and shovel at it, and never leave it till the antique pavement and the real basis of the matter show itself clear again ;' or of his asking himself, in the character of 'the reforming Hercules, what work is now necessary, not in form and by traditionary use and wont, but in very fact, for the vital interests of the British nation, to be done here,'

 But of course the great remedy is Hero worship,— to choose ourselves a Lama, or from six to a dozen of them after the example of the people of Thibet, who have ' seen into the heart of the matter ;' to get the divinest men into Downing-street in place of the present Parvuluses and Zeros; who might just as well be elected without so much cost and trouble by throwing an orange skin into St. James'-street and taking the man it hit ; and generally to increase ' the reverence for Human Intellect or God's Light and the detestation of Human Stupidity or the Devil's Darkness.' As a practical suggestion to set us going in this scheme of universal reform— which otherwise, now that Sir Robert Peel is gone, would be rather vague— Mr. Carlyle proposes that the Crown should be empowered to nominate part of the Ministry to seats in the House of Commons, without constituencies, of which he speaks in the most disparaging and anti-democratic terms. This again is not original. But it is original to imagine that such an arrangement would open the Cabinet to ' the whole British nation, learned, unlearned, professional, practical, speculative, and miscellaneous,' and that if it had been in force 50 years ago, instead of having ' meagre Pitt' for First Minister, we might have had ' the thundergod,' Robert Burns.

Britannia and Trades' Advocate (Hobart Town, Tas. ), May 1851 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article225557511

DESPOTISM.

—But even were the sentiment which induces the many to submit to one a noble sentiment, even were the relation of autocrat and slave a morally wholesome one, and even were it possible to find the fittest man to be despot, we should still contend that such a form of government is bad. We should not contend this simply on the ground that self-government is a valuable educator, though, had we space, we might say much to show that it is better for a people to be imperfectly governed by themselves than to be perfectly governed by another. But we should take the ground that no human being, however wise and good, is fit to be sole ruler over all the doings of a vast and involved society; and that with the best intentions such an one is very likely to produce the most terrible mischiefs, which would else have been impossible. In illustration of this position, we will take the case of all others the most favourable to those who would give supreme power to the best. We will instance the man taken by Mr Carlyle as the model hero—Cromwell.
Doubtless there was much in the manners of the times when Puritanism arose to justify its disgust. Doubtless the vices, vanities, and follies bequeathed by an effete Catholicism still struggling for existence were bad enough to create a reactionary asceticism. It is in the order of nature, however, that men's habits and pleasures are not to be changed suddenly. For any permanent effect to be produced, it must be produced slowly. Better tastes, higher aspirations, must be grown up to; not enforced from without. Disaster is sure to result from the withdrawal of lower gratifications before higher ones have taken their place; for gratification of some kind is a condition to healthful existence. Whatever ascetic morality, or rather immorality, may say, pleasures and pains are the incentives and restraints by which nature keeps her progeny from destruction. No contemptuous title of "pig-philosophy" will alter the eternal fact, that misery is a highway to death; while happiness is added life, and the giver of life. But indignant Puritanism could not see this truth, and with the usual extravagance of fanaticism sought to abolish pleasure in general. Getting into power, it put down not only questionable amusements, but all others along with them. And for these repressions, Cromwell, either as enacting or maintaining them, was responsible. What, now, was the result of this attempt to dragoon men into virtue ? What came when the strong man, who thought he was thus "helping God to mend all," died ? There came a dreadful reaction, there came one of the most degraded periods of our history. Into the newly-garnished house entered "seven other spirits more wicked than the first." For generations the English character was lowered; vice was gloried in, virtue was ridiculed; dramatists made marriage the stock subject of laughter; profaneness and obscenity flourished ; high aspirations ceased ; the whole age was corrupt. Not until George III. reigned was there a better standard of living. And for this century of demoralization we have, in a great measure, to thank Cromwell. Is it, then, so clear that the domination of one man, righteous though he may be, is a blessing? Is it not apt to be a curse ?—Westminster Review.
Adelaide Observer (SA ), 14 August 1858, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article158123615

JOHN PIERPONT MORGAN.

The death of Mr John Pierpont Morgan, tho American millionaire, which has just taken place, removes one of the greatest organisers of a country in which organisational and combination have been developed to an extent not attempted in any other country, and not thought of by most of the world. Mr Morgan started life as a banker, and that whetted a naturally keen appreciation of the value of money, and extended a somewhat sordid desire to possess great wealth, not for the power that it might give in the direction of helping any public cause, but for the satisfaction that it would yield to his personal ambition. He, therefore, in early life concentrated his forces to achieve an end by which America largely, but falsely, measures the value of a man—to have and control wealth. Such an ambition is legitimate enough as the world goes, but when it extends to the limits of using the public utilities to aid its process, the case presents a different aspect, for then, it is the rise of one man at the cost of many men, since no man at the exercise of his own energies alone can become a multimillionaire, in respect to actually earned profits.
 But Mr Morgan's determination to succeed in a mere money-making sense was not softened by any gentle considerations embodying moral speculation. He was a keen, hard business man from first to last, and he was, like nearly all the millionaires, gifted with that type of mind which centres all ambitions in personal gratification and notoriety. For all that he was a man of strong and almost vivid personality, the basis of whose character was indomitable determination. So much was this developed that it not only caused him to have a "fine conceit of himself," but to regard his direction as being indispensable, and to cause a certain "savage brusqueness" to usurp the place of ordinary courtesy and business civility. It must be remembered that he had both enemies and keen competitors operating against him ; but instead of taking them philosophically, like Rockefeller, he accepted them as an undeserved burden which did not extend any original amiable quality of which he might have been possessed. He heartily and especially hated newspaper men, and he regarded them in the light of a new pest in the world. They have a kind of unfortunate family habit of letting the public know the facts operating against and in favor of the masses. Pierpont Morgan, as a typical class man, thought this unnecessary, and resented its performance. Perhaps he considered that it had a tendency to arrest the easy course of wealth accumulation, and maybe a "newspaper person" had spoiled a deal or two; but, whatever the cause, he regarded them as interfering devils, while Rockefeller always alludes to journalists by calling them his friends and "the boys." Rockefeller knows his indebtedness to the Press, and so does Carnegie; but Pierpont Morgan stood for much the same "Me and God" principle which once actuated the German Emperor, and consequently he regarded himself as self-made, with some improvements on the original design. The power of money he knew to be in the handling and control of it, but the power of profit-making he early saw was not in the mere possession and use of half active money, but in controlling public necessities, either in transport or other directions, by using it to the uttermost limit of its tender and influence. His methods were audacious when viewed from the ordinary business atmosphere. They were portion of the man, and they made his success. He believed, like Napoleon, in "making circumstances." The manufacture is a pleasant business; the results mostly of permanent effect.

Zeehan and Dundas Herald (Tas. : 1890 - 1922), Wednesday 2 April 1913, page 2

ABOUT THE SUPERMAN.

His Origin.

 WHO THRUST HIM ON GERMANY? 

At the present moment it would require some almost unimaginably detached person — perhaps "a philosophic Chinaman "—to write a history of the Superman idea. No German can treat it fairly just now, says Mr. Sidney Low, though a German has lately tried it. Mr. Low is hardly more inclined to believe his own countrymen capable of the task, for they seem to think that the preachers of the doctrine are all Germans. Nothing can be more ridiculous, he avers, in the London 'Standard,' than to say, as some hasty people do in England, that "there would not have been war but for Nietzsche and his 'blonde beasts' and 'slave morality.' " He scoffs at the idea that Germany has been perverted by the teachings of two or three philosophers and literary men; in particular by Treitschke and Nietzsche, "of whom till last year many Germans probably knew no more than the majority of Englishmen." If you wish to find the sources of all these ideas so current in Germany and outside about Germany, England has only to look to her own classic writers, or those of the 19th century just mounted comfortably upon the classic shelves. As to Germany, she has only accepted the honours thrust upon her. Mr. Low sees her case quite differently:
 "The great social groups and forces which have supported the war policy, the military chiefs, the Prussian Junkers, the merchants and financiers who want to exploit other countries, the masses who have been scared by the bogey of Panslavism and the 'freedom of the seas,' do not read the philosophers and historians. But these latter have influenced the professors, the students, and the intellectuals generally; and through them they have supplied what is deemed a philosophic and historical warrant for the passions and ambitions that are really derived from quite other motives."

 The Superman Doctrine Not German at all.

 The doctrine of the Superman and the Super-race is, Mr. Low asserts, "like most other things in Germany, not of German invention." He finds, instead, that "it was developed in France, Italy, and England, in one form or another, before it was adopted as a distinctively Teutonic faith." In fact:
 "In its origin it was partly ethnological, partly biological, and partly political. In the last sense it was associated with that revolt against democracy, characteristic of so many leading minds in Britain and elsewhere during the 19th century. Carlyle, Ruskin, Tennyson, Newman, Samuel Butler, Renan, Ibsen, Emerson, Matthew Arnold, were all supporters, consciously or unconsciously, of the aristocratic ideal. They heard the tramp of 'the wild mob's million feet,' and did not like the sound; fearing that art, culture, religion, the refinements of life, might be crushed beneath that indiscriminating march. The ignorance, the loose thinking, the vulgarity and crudeness of the masses impressed and frightened even those of them who were in theory Liberals and Democrats. Ruskin was a Socialist, a lover of the people, an opponent of convention, plutocracy, and privilege. Yet his whole temper of mind is aristocratic. His ideal is that of Plato, an oligarchy of 'guardians,' a kind of spiritual Samurai who would rule and direct the poor and uninstructed for their own good and the greater glory of God. Arnold was a bitter critic of our 'barbarian' British governing classes, but he, too, wanted government by a genuine aristocracy of intellect and culture. So did Emerson. These literary gentlemen, in those sheltered Victorian days, naturally wanted their heroes to be rather like themselves, extremely polished persons, who thought a good library the nearest approach to a terrestrial paradise, and regarded war and violence as ill-bred anachronisms."

 Carlyle and His Fools.

 Two British writers there were who put the idea in a different form, and, we are assured, were mainly responsible for its diffusion in Germany. Carlyle was one:
 "The rugged Scots peasant, with his dyspepsia and his perpetual ill-temper, his standing grievance against the general scheme of things, laid about him with more resounding weapons. Sick of the mediocrity and insincerity which democracy, as he thought, encouraged, he fell back on the personality of the man of genius, the hero divinely inspired to set a disjointed world right. Every nation and society being composed of persons who were 'mostly fools,' the only salvation was that they should be controlled, guided, taught, if need be, thwacked, dragooned, and drummed into sense and good behaviour by the Great Man to whom, as by divine illumination, the 'eternal verities' were revealed. If the 'fools,' the lesser multitude, would not recognise their prophet and saviour, then it was eminently desirable to adopt means of coercion. Carlyle, like many other invalids, and many others whose occupations are sedentary and inactive, had a pathetic admiration for sheer physical force. His 'hero' tended sometimes to be rather like the hero of the young lady's school, the hero of the middle-aged lady's novel, a tremendously 'virile' individual, all muscle and ferocious manliness and fierce, unbridled strength. Consequently he rehabilitated the soldier, that creature so closely in touch with the eternal verities that he does not merely talk and argue and write (like Carlyle himself and all the black-coated acquaintances he despised), but can on occasion actually pull out a long knife and stick you dead with it. And if he did by the means of long knives, whips, whiffs of grapeshot, bullets, Drogheda massacres, and so forth, impress his conviction upon the slavish or the unveracious, he was only by these regrettable means pursuing his divine mission. Carlyle's favourite hero was a Hohenzollern king; his favourite heroic people were the Germans, and more particularly the Prussians. He had a great influence in Germany, and did much to foster the worship of the Superman, the physically strong Superman, in the more cultured circles of that country."

 Darwin's Influence in Germany.

 If England is to abjure the teachings that have brought the present calamitous war upon her, what will be her emotions towards the memory of the other Englishman who, in Mr. Low's view, shares with Carlyle an even greater responsibility of influence — Charles Darwin:
  "The theory of the survival of the fittest bit deep into the Teutonic mind. It was the side of Darwinism on which the heaviest stress was laid, so much so that Haeckel and other Germans attributed to it an importance which Darwin never claimed for it himself, and which the neo-Darwinians completely repudiate. But the German materialist school fastened with delight on the conception of all life as a perpetual and unending struggle, in which only the strong can survive and the weak must inevitably perish. Nature, 'red in tooth and claw,' has laid its savage fiat of rapine and destruction upon man as upon all other created beings. The idea is worked to death by Nietzsche, and is, in fact, at the basis of all his teachings. 'Be strong,' is the grim watchword of all creation. Increase and multiply; seize by force or fraud if need be the means of sustenance and power; crush the weak under your feet, lest you be yourself trampled down; for weakness is not only wickedness; it is ruin, futility, extinction. There is no room and no need for all who survive, at least no room for them to survive and develop their higher intellectual and corporeal activities. Therefore let the impotent Many be robbed, and enslaved so that the Few and Fit may go on increasing their capacities and their superiority. Men may rise on stepping-stones of other people's dead selves and bruised lives to higher things. Thus shall the 'Will to Power be fulfilled, and the Superman be born."

"The Chosen People of the North."

 Finally, there is the influence of the imperial ethnologists:
"The 19th century scholars, conspicuously represented in England by such historians as Freeman and Stubbs, gave great play to the theory of the superiority of the 'Germanic' races. The Franco-Italian Count Gobineau carried it further, and so did the Frenchman Vacher de Lapouge. These writers developed the thesis that European culture depended mainly or entirely on the chosen 'Aryan' stock, which was only found in its purity among the northern Teutonic and Scandinavian peoples. Their speculations were gathered up and exaggerated in the extravagant fantasies of Richard Houston Chamberlain, whose farrago of learned nonsense caught hold of Germany like a nightmare. Sixty thousand copies of this massive gospel of ethnic arrogance were sold in Germany in a few months. The book is one long and involved paean of Germanic triumph. "There is nothing in European culture worth having that is not 'Germanic' from King David to Peter the Great, from Homer to Dante, from the marbles of the Acropolis to the sonatas of Beethoven, from Alexander the Great to Napoleon Bonaparte. Celts, Iberians, the 'Alpine' race, Jews, Slavs, are only worthy to live as the dependents and subjects of the chosen people of the North. This is the gospel of the Superrace, whereof the German Kaiser with his legions and his guns and his gas-projectors is the apostle to the Gentiles."
 The idea will doubtless find many to attempt its philosophic solution, after the war. Just now, as Mr. Low remarks, we must not look to one of the combatant nations for any 'fair' solution.

The Catholic Press 13 January 1916  http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article105163106

METTERNICH: NAPOLEON'S BANE

Of Metternich, the Austrian statesman who had nearly, perhaps quite, as much to do with the downfall of Napoleon as our own Pitt or Wellington; who was regarded during the first half of the nineteenth century by the Liberals of Europe as a Machiavellian reactionary, zealously re-forging for Continental peoples the chains of religious and political authority which the French revolution had burst; who was, next to Napoleon, the greatest personal force in the international politics of the post-revolutionary period—of this man, as interesting in his private life, as he was influential in his public policy, there has hitherto been no English biography at all adequate to his place in history. In fact, the only "life" of him worth mentioning with which we are acquainted is that written by G. B. Malleson more than twenty years ago for the "Statesmen Series." and that was no more than a highly condensed text-book. A young Oxford historian, Sir. G. A. C. Sandeman, has now attempted, "without pretending to produce any new facts, or to expound any original theories," to give in a comparatively short volume a trustworthy sketch of Metternich's life from the domestic as well as the official side. ("Metternich," by G. A. C. Sandeman. London: Methuen; Melbourne: George Robertson and Co.) 

In the main Mr. Sandeman is to be congratulated upon the manner in which he has performed the task he set before himself. His sketch is clearly based on wide and intelligent study of German authorities, and of contemporary documents, as well as of English historical works dealing with the times in which Metternich played his part upon the world's stage. He has not over loaded his pages with dry details, but he has provided excellent concise summaries of the wars and diplomatic struggles which formed, so to speak, the setting of Metternich's career. At the same time he has avoided the bald and categorical method of a text book, and put in enough descriptive and anecdotal decoration to attract readers who are not professed historical students.

Clement Metternich was essentially a child of the eighteenth century. Born in 1773, he was brought up under the old-world conditions of absolutism in politics, cast-worship in society, and polished artificiality in manners and conduct—conditions which received their death-blow when French mobs captured the Bastille, invaded Royal palaces, legislative assemblies, and courts of justice, and gloated over the executions of King, Queen, aristocrats, and even moderate Republicans. Throughout his life he remained true to the eighteenth-century type, essentially artificial as it was in its loves and its politics, its wigs and its wars, its complexions and its diplomacy. As Mr. Sandeman, who judges him anything but harshly on the whole, admits, Metternich somehow leaves a bad taste in the mouth:—"Attractive, talented, and always socially successful, he nevertheless gives the impression of always posing for effect, or pleasing for an object. He was painfully self-complacent. He was a strange mixture of domestic affection and domestic infidelity, of apparent strength and real weakness, of firm principle and gross inconsistency. He intermingled politics with pleasure, concerts with conferences, women with work." With him Clement Metternich always came first, the Hapsburg dynasty next, and then, more and more remote, the Austrian Empire and the German Fatherland. His family, an ancient and renowned one, had in latter generations gained wealth and position by holding posts under the Austrian Government. His father looked to the Emperor's favour for continuance in offices, which meant, for one so extravagant, if not actual means of livelihood, at least the only chance of keeping together the remnants of large ancestral states. Thus Clement Metternich was, so to speak, born a courtier and a believer in personal rule. It was only natural that such a man, however much he may have been, as he himself insisted, a friend of liberty, and a sympathiser with progress, should incline, not only in the routine work of administration, but upon all critical occasions, when a decisive choice had to be made, to the side of cautious conservatism, and should desire above all to maintain in operation the principles of the old regime.

About the time of Metternich's birth, the German courts, great and small, were thoroughly French in tone, and many of their rulers attracted, as even the autocratic Frederick the Great was at one time, by the liberal ideas of the French philosophers who made ready the intellectual pathway of the coming Revolution, had sought to govern as "benevolent despots" for the benefit of their subjects. From princes and courtiers the liberal ideas were filtering through to the peoples at large, but as yet the ruling classes had no fear that the people themselves might wish to take charge of legislation and work out their own salvation. This in a special sense was true of Austria, of which Mr. Sandeman remarks:—

"Nowhere was bureaucracy so stolid and immutable; nowhere was dynastic tradition so strong; nowhere was the aristocracy so proud. There would be no yielding here to the forces of Liberalism,any more than there would be in Prussia, bound by the iron military discipline of Frederick the Great. As a matter of fact, there was to be no struggle with Liberalism in Germany until after the struggle with revolutionary France. A great and unscrupulous intellect curbing the turbulent elements of revolution made use of the patriotism and fervour which that revolution had awakened to unite the French people under the banner of ambition. In face of this overwhelming peril, German Liberalism was merged in German patriotism. In Austria and Prussia alike, the aspirations of the masses were, for the moment, turned to the defence of their Fatherland. When all was over patriotism in turn assumed the guise of Liberalism, but statesmen for the most part still lived in the eighteenth century. Even gratitude could not induce them to grant the masses a voice in affairs. Then came an era of spasmodic and almost universal eruption. Rulers thought they were fighting the remnants of this Revolution; they were really kicking against the pricks of Liberty. And in the end the people won."
   Thus succinctly does Mr. Sandeman describe the historical framework in which Metternich's career was set. His diplomatic successes just before and during the overthrow of Napoleon's power brought Metternich fame and authority. Then for a long period of years Austria became, under his skilful guidance, the leading power not only in Germany but in Continental Europe. Though neither cruel nor consciously a reactionary, Metternich had a consuming dread of revolution and all that was associated with it, and consequently he opposed, often with stern severity, everything that might be construed as a manifestation of it. Liberalism, in its constitutional form, he mistook for such a manifestation, and he struggled against it in the Austrian dominions, in Germany, and, as far as he could, by diplomatic action in every Continental country. It was this horror of revolution that brought him into conflict with the national spirit of Hungary and of Italy, and, at last with the popular sentiment of Austria proper. As a result, the man who had, after Waterloo, had the chief say in determining the general policy of the European powers, was, in 1848; driven from office and ultimately into an exile of three years by popular risings in both Austria and Hungary. Metternich's, career, as Mr. Sandeman points out, may be summed up under two heads. In the first place, it was a successful struggle for Austria and Europe against Napoleon and the French Revolution. In the second place, it was an unsuccessful struggle against Liberalism, which was in reality the inevitable claim of the people to a share in their own government, but which Metternich, with his eighteenth century traditions, never ceased to regard as the French Revolution under a new guise, as a destructive agency against which all the champions of order must range themselves. 

After attending courses at the Universities of Strasburg, Mainz, and Brussels successively, Metternich received his first diplomatic appointment at The Hague, whence he was afterwards promoted to Dresden. At the Saxon capital he struck up a friendship with the eccentric English ambassador, Hugh Elliot, who had been sent to Dresden after losing his post at Copenhagen because he declared war on Denmark on his own responsibility. Elliot used to boast to Metternich that he always had news to send home to his Government. "If I do not know of anything," he would say, "I invent my news, and contradict it by the next courier." A representative of the "yellowest" of American journals, could do no more. Even at this early stage Metternich showed a wonderful capacity for combining business and pleasure. He had numerous love affairs, but most of them were with ladies who had political influence that might be used to his advantage, or who could supply him with information on affairs of State gathered from husbands, or other lovers. From Dresden in turn Metternich was moved to the important post of Austrian representative at Berlin, where, in 1805, he had to conduct difficult negotiations with the vacillating King of Prussia, who hesitated to join Austria against Napoleon until Austria had been crushed for the time being at Austerlitz. Strange though it seems in the light of after events, Napoleon was at this time personally favourable to Metternich, and it was at the French Emperor's request that Metternich was sent in 1806 as Austrian ambassador to Paris.

His embassy was from the outset a brilliant social success. Mr. Sandeman tells how "his old-world and stately dignity could not fail to impress the parvenu Court of Napoleon." Napoleon was then striving to bolster up his anomalous position as at once a military autocrat and a child of the Revolution by mimicking the manners and ceremonies of the old legitimate monarchy. Metternich made merry over these attempts to restore old royal forms, to build up by lavish expenditure a Court, and aristocracy fit to vie in splendour with those of Louis the Great. As usual Metternich sought and found favour with prominent ladies of the Court to which he was accredited. Among those with whom he contracted a connection closer than that of friendship was Napoleon's sister, Caroline Bonaparte,who afterwards married Murat and so became Queen of Naples. The manner of his first introduction to her exemplifies the rudeness with which Napoleon sought to conceal his awkwardness in society. Napoleon left Caroline and Metternich together, remarking to his sister as he went out, "Entertain this simpleton. We are wanted elsewhere." This brusque introduction was the beginning of a liaison which lasted down to 1814. In that year, when the armies of the Allies were invading France, Castlereagh, to his astonishment, came across some intercepted letters from Metternich to the Queen of Naples, not only giving her advice, but couched in terms of endearment. During the Paris embassy Metternich used his intimacy with Caroline Bonaparte to gain information which she wheedled out of Napoleon and brought to her lover. This was known to some, at any rate, of Napoleon's Ministers, for we find General Savary, chief of the confidential police, writing that Metternich had "the absolute disposal of a lady of whom Fouche has an indispensable need. Discretion," he added, "forbids me to name her." The advantage, however, of these amorous stratagems does not appear to have been all on Metternich's side, for Fouche and Talleyrand in their turn used Caroline as a source of information about Austrian plans.       

The Paris embassy ended with the renewal of war between Austria and France in 1809. When Metternich got back to Vienna that capital was already in Napoleon's hand, and for a time he was held a prisoner. Upon his release be made straight for the headquarters of his master, the Emperor Francis, who welcomed him cordially, and ordered him to remain at his side as a political adviser for the rest of the campaign. Thus Metternich was present at the disastrous battle of Wagram, which reduced Austria to a state of something very like vassalage to Napoleon. It was soon after the signature of the Treaty of Vienna, which closed this war, that Metternich became Chancellor of the Austrian Empire and Minister for Foreign Affairs. It is probable that his appointment was meant in part as a sop to Napoleon, who did not foresee in the astute diplomatist the future engineer of his downfall. As a matter of fact, from 1809 until 1814 Austria, under Metternich's control, became ostensibly a friend of France. Metternich, who had been a strenuous advocate of war to the death against Napoleon, suddenly threw over the patriotic party, and became seemingly the servile partisan of the French Emperor. He had not abated his desire to free his country from Napoleonic domination, but he realised that in Austria's present condition any clashing with Napoleon's interests, or even with his caprices, would be suicidal. It was not that he adopted a genuinely Francophile policy, but that he entered upon. a Fabian game of waiting and watching. Peace and time were needed for the reorganisation of Austria's resources, and these could only be gained by judicious conciliation of Napoleon.  While outwardly professing friendship for Napoleon, however, Metternich was all the time steadily preparing the way for the day on which his master should be able to exact retribution from the Corsican adventurer.
   The story of the way in which Metternich duped Napoleon after the return from Moscow, until, at the critical moment, the sword of Austria was thrown into the balance against the French Emperor, albeit that he had, in the meantime, become the son-in-law of the Hapsburg Caesar, is too long to be told here, but it will be found related adequately in Mr Sandeman's volume.  Metternich's was not an heroic, nor even a morally defensible policy, but it was eminently prudent. His sacrifice of his master's daughter Marie Louise to a man whose very name she loathed was, Mr. Sandeman insists, and, what is more, proves,"no cowardly surrender to Napoleonic ambition." According to him—

"The Archduchess was the pawn, whose shifting started the long and deadly game in which Metternich schemed upon the chess-board of Europe to checkmate Napoleon. The history of the relations of Austria and France, from the Marriage Alliance to the battle of Leipsic, if read aright, forms an enthralling drama in which Napoleon became slowly but surely entangled in the toils of Austrian diplomacy, to be mercilessly overwhelmed when all the forces for his destruction had been marshalled."       

Mr. Sandeman, it may be mentioned, completely disposes of the unhistorical view of Metternich's attitude towards Napoleon's son, set forth by Rostand in his "L'Aiglon," which was played a few years ago here in Melbourne. The Emperor Francis was evidently very fond of his grandson, but it was obviously impossible to let him go free for fear of complications with France. No captivity, however, could have been pleasanter than that which the lad endured in the beautiful palace of Schoenbrunn. The sinister motives which Rostund attributes to Metternich in the appointment of the young Prince's tutors had no foundation in fact, and Mr. Sandeman declares that it is a "cruel libel" to accuse Metternich of pandering to the lad's vices, or encouraging him to indulge in excesses.
    It is somewhat of a shock to preconceived ideas, gathered from popular English historical works, to learn, as one does from Mr. Sandeman, that Metternich was no strong-minded statesman, pushing forward—now, by force now by guile—a consistent policy, in spite of all obstacles, but essentially a timid ruler, who did, no doubt, hate opposition, but yet never took the bull by the horns, being ever ready to abandon any particular plan at the least hindrance. In short, the real Metternich appears to have been a diplomatist rather than a statesman. It was in the duping of Napoleon that he won his greatest success, and, so long as the work before him was mainly diplomatic re-construction arising out of the disturbances caused by the Napoleonic wars, he contrived, not only to enhance his own reputation among his contemporaries, but, to make his country's prestige great among the nations. It was when broad sympathy with human kind, and constructive statesmanship, were demanded of him by the growth of Liberal ideas among the peoples of the Austrian empire that he failed. History presents us with a Metternich, not the awful ogre of a Rostand, but a very brilliant diplomatist, with the manners of an eighteenth century exquisite, but without the breadth of mind or the moral courage to be a really great statesman.


The Australasian 29 July 1911

THE NEW FRENCH CONSTITUTION.

To the Editor of the Times.

Sir- The "Constitution" of the 14th of January is now at work. The world may study and it must admire the operation of "the right derived from the people, and of the force that comes from God." The tyranny that appropriates the one is worthy of the blasphemy that arrogates the other. That "Constitution" created in the name of seven millions and a half of votes, which were a sham—of 1789, which it falsifies—and of universal suffrage, which it throttles and it cheats ; a President, a Senate, a Council of State, and a Legislature. The Senate and Council of State are directly and avowedly named by the President, who, in point of fact, has named himself ; and the Legislature, though ostensibly elected by the people, has really been nominated by the same omnivorous authority. The progress of natural philosophy has simplified our conceptions of the laws that govern the material universe. In lieu of half a dozen conflicting forces, we find that attraction is the agent which determines vast or motion, which makes an apple fall, a temple stand, or a planet swing in space. M. Bonaparte's political philosophy is equally concise. Attraction is its sum and substance, attraction which begins and ends in him. He is the centre of a solar system, and only satellites revolve around him. 

Each vital organism has functions corresponding exactly with its structure, of which they are simply the effects. The comparative anatomist examines some fossil impressions on a rock, marks their zoological characters, and recalls into existence an antediluvian world. The political anatomist may predict with almost equal precision the results of social organizations. A plain and a free people will produce a Leonidas, a Cincinnatus, or a Washington ; a polished and turbulent Democracy will breed a Themistocles or an Alcibiades ; a dissolute and degenerate Aristocracy and a pauper Plebs will receive a master in a Julius or Augustus ; a Praetorian camp and a debauched community will hatch a Commodus or a Heliogabalus. What may we expect from the "Constitution" of France.

The Presidential perquisites and powers might be comprised in the exclamation of Louis XIV.— "L'état! C'est moi." That compendious despotism had the merit of simplicity and frankness. ' It would be difficult to say, what part of the State belongs to itself, or indeed to anybody else, by the side of a "Chief" who organizes, disorganizes, and commands the forces by sea and land—decides war and peace—makes treaties offensive, defensive, and commercial—appoints to all employments and deprives of all—regulates and decrees the execution of the laws, and monopolizes their infraction—dispenses justice and dispenses with it—has the sole initiative of legislation, and the liberum veto too—declares martial law and goes beyond it—has the power of pardon and converts it to a sinecure or employs it only to debauch—makes and breaks Ministers and Ministries—and names his own successor. Call it what we may Presidency or Empire, this is an absolute Autocracy. To work, it requires but a Council of State, or a divan, an army of Janizaries, and a nation of slaves. Force is its vital principle. If viable at all, it must live on terror, and the first symptom of weakness it exhibits is the signal for opposition and the tocsin of its fall. Unless history is no better than "an old almanack" it proclaims this.

M. Bonaparte comprehends the logic of his situation. He is Cæsar or nothing. He substitutes "authority" for liberty, and he must make "authority" felt, and tread liberty out—he pits the will of one against the intelligence of all, and between intelligence and him there must be war to the death. It may admit of doubt if such a Power is wise in even shamming Representative forms. While strong it plays with them—when weak, they master it. The best thing, perhaps, for M. Bonaparte would be no Legislature at all—the next best thing is to render it contemptible. In this, he has perfectly succeeded.

By the last article of the "Constitution," the decrees issued between the 2nd of December and the convocation of "the great bodies of the State," are to have "the force of law." This was not meant to be a brutum fulmen. After the confiscation of the Orleans' property, the ukases were few and inoffensive, and the week or two preceding the legislative elections were almost a calm. The commercial optimists plunged into their fool's paradise, as usual, and babbled of confidence, clemency, economy, a vast reduction of the army, prosperity, and peace. The elections over the scene changed. A diarrhoea of decrees succeeded the temporary dictatorial costiveness, and scattered confusion over France. The Tyrant who announced that "he was the State," consistently added, " après moi le Déluge."

Land banks, or the Crédit Foncier, had long been a favourite scheme of the Socialists. In operation, good or bad, in Germany, they had been proposed to the Constituent Assembly, and voted against by Louis Napoleon, through the medium of his Ministers. To catch the electors of the 29th of February, the Crédit Foncier was decreed on the 28th, and ten millions of the Orleans' revenues were liberally given to set it up. It will promote the spirit of speculation, accelerate the impending monetary crisis, and enable the peasant proprietors of France to borrow at six or seven per cent., in order to buy land which will pay them three.

To purify the administration of justice and to carry out the article in the Napoleonic Constitution, which affirms their irremovability, magistrates from 70 to 75 years of age are made removable. The option of removing them rests with the Government, which can thus reward the good and smite the bad. The Court of Cassation may dismiss them at any age for "grave misconduct." As political and Press offences are now decided by the Judges, the opportunities for such "misconduct," as well as for its chastisement are rife. The condemnation, on appeal, of M. Bocher shows how well this provision acts. The prudence of the Bench responds to the vigour of the President.

On the 3rd of March a little gentle pressure compelled the Bank of France to reduce its rate of discount to 3 per cent. In consideration of an extension of its privilege, which, it would seem, it had a right to claim, it accepts by instalments spread over 15 years, the repayment by the State of 75 millions duo in 1852. By this excellent arrangement, M. D'Argout continues to keep his place, the Bank can encourage speculation by advances upon railway shares, its weekly returns, which exhibited the deplorable state of trade are exchanged for monthly, and more convenient ones, the Government can squander the 75 millions to-day, and put off its debts till tomorrow.

Concurrently with this financial "operation," an order was issued for 13 different costumes for 13 sets of functionaries. We are not informed if the Bank may make advances upon them, though the vast amount of the precious metals consumed in their decoration would, perhaps, warrant it in doing so. As a later decree has transferred the direction of the Monts de Piététo the Prefect of the Seine and the Minister of the Interior, they may soon enjoy the opportunity of estimating at their market value, the habits of many of their friends. If the coup d'état has plunged the half of France in mourning, it has put the other half in livery.

In the middle of January the Constitutionnel announced the proximate conversion of the Five per Cents. This was instantly and flatly contradicted by the Moniteur. That contradiction rendered the occurrence highly probable. Early in March, similar rumours led to a similar denial. The rentiers went to sleep on the night of the 13th officially, if not comfortably reassured, and awoke next morning to ascertain, from that same Moniteur, that they had lost the tenth of their income. Those who approved of the immortal Plébiscite, and voted oui for the President will not regret that paltry diminution. They shouted exultingly that "France was saved," and surely its salvation is worth a half per cent. The millions squeezed from them will adorn the civil list, and will sustain those faithful Senators and patriotic Prefects who are the Corinthian pillars of the Napoleonian edifice. M. Bineau made a trivial mistake in his calculation of the cost of the "conversion." Thirty to forty millions must be directly reimbursed ; and the country was only snatched from insolvency and a "convulsion" by the banking and the railway millionaires. The Plutocracy was coaxed and bullied to fly to the rescue of the Government, with enormous and desperate purchases of stock guaranteed by it. This virtually amounts to a loan of from two to three hundred millions. If these financial coups d'état are backed and carried through by capitalists, they may find them Pyrrich victories.

The Constitution informed the Corps Législatif that it would be suffered "to discuss and vote the taxes," to lay the imposts on the nation's back, but to have no voice in their expenditure. So popular a privilege was worthy so popular a body. The very fact of that small permission being granted afforded, however, a natural presumption that it would be withdrawn. Accordingly on the 19th March, ten days before the "Legislature" met, the Budget came out in a decree. The proceeding was not without advantages. It made the Corps Législatif ridiculous—it was consistent with the practice of M. Bonaparte, who is far too great to respect a promise it asserted the imperial dogma of authority —it dispensed with parlage—it cut short impertinent curiosity—it prevented scandals, which the "eternal enemies of order" might extract from the balance sheet of the coup d'etat, the household and the Ministry—and it exhibited the delightful spectacle of a Budget positively in equilibrium.

There are various kinds of equilibrium. The vulgar one is to stand upon both feet, but there is nothing singular in that. A gentleman astonishes the streets of London by poising a pipe on the tip of his nose—another stands with his head on a spear—a third borrows the brawny limbs of a fellow mountebank and hangs by them in various and extraordinary fashions. The equilibrium of the Budget is a pose arithmetique of this description. It is a deep financial exercitation, worthy of the most "pleasant" days of Hudson. To a common-place economist, who merely trusts in figures, this most miraculous equilibrium would seem a deficit of 53 millions now, and when the civil list and "the supplementary credits" are thrown in, of 100 millions at the least.

Since this Budget by proclamation, a charming item has not added to the income. The 35 millions appropriated by M. Bonaparte from the Orleans' spoil to assurance societies, labourers' lodgings, the Legion of "Honour," and the curates' fund, are now to be raised by the sale of the national forests. The confiscated property is taken in pawn to secure repayment. A revolution may disturb this larcenous thimble-rig, and "the little pea" may not be found where M. Bonaparte has seemed to put it. The 35 millions of bribes in the mean time, go to assist the "equilibrium."

The Prefects are deservedly in good odour. Their exertions during the last twelve months have been most exemplary. They were the elegiasts of the Emperor gone, the trumpeters of the Emperor to come—they hunted down the Socialist game which M. Carlier started — they cooked for the gobemouches of " the groat party of order," the daily dèjeûner in the morning journals of departmental Jacqueries, conspiracies, and carmagnoles—they organised the claqueurs for the Presidential progresses, and brigaded the Bonapartist troupe for the balls and banquets they managed the petitioning against the Constituent Assembly and that for the revision of the Constitution—they covered the coup d'état with the pretended rising of the Red Republicans—they manufactured the seven millions and a half of votes—they took charge of universal suffrage and freedom of election for the Corps Légistif—and they are destined for the glorious mission of duly getting up the Empire. Gratitude is said to be a lively sense of future favours ; M. Bonaparte makes it a retaining fee for future services. His decree on what he jocosely christens "decentralization" is both a reward and bribe. The Prefects obtain the monopoly of the business and of the jobs of their departments. They are more than Pashas in irresponsible authority, and they only need the horse tails, the bowstring, and the bastinado. Their salaries are augmented as liberally as their perquisites. The celebrated commissaries of Ledru Rollin passed for the incarnation of republican rapacity. These cormorants pouched for three months' work £150. a piece. As a set off against this profligate profusion, the Republic reduced the income of the Prefects a third below the standard of the Revolution of July. M. Bonaparte has raised it above that level, and has almost doubled the budget of the Prefectures, by the trifling addition of nearly two millions to the prosperous budget of the State. Another help to the " equilibrium."

The Legion of Honour already owed much to Louis Napoleon. Its riband was like the recruiting sergeant's, and was fastened on all who would enlist for Bonaparte. The "legion" was as numerous and almost as respectable as the gendarmerie. It was a mark of singularity not to belong to it. The position it now holds is higher still. On the 21st March, the President reviewed the Parisian regiments, paternally addressed them, in imitation of Feargus O'Connor, as his "glorious children," and generously bestowed on a considerable number of "distinguished" privates, the order, a medal, and 100 francs per annum filched from the House of Orleans. Twenty of these new ornaments of the Legion were selected for their exploits in the great days of December. These heroes of the Boulevard have no reason to complain. Five francs, and upwards, for the job, a jollification on eau-de-vie, brutal arrests of unarmed representatives, brilliant assaults on undefended barricades, and a battue of the bourgeoisie are "glorious" claims for decoration and a pension. Their brothers in riband must be gratified to think that these fresh associates are the " butchers" of their parents, relatives, and friends. M. Bonaparte, however, has stamped a new chivalry upon the corps, by conferring on it the enviable privilege, though rather difficult task, of swearing a solemn oath of fidelity to honour and to him.

The speakers of the Peace Society inquire with ingenious simplicity, what motive could possibly impel French soldiers to assail their British brothers Fraternity ? is, we know, a military virtue, and armies are not drilled to passive obedience, broken to discipline, formed and flogged to do the bidding of the State, fond of plunder, greedy of promotion, given to gazettes and glory, nor disposed to do a little quiet business in blood, rape, robbery, and arson. Admitting these too obvious truisms, it is still questionable if the soldiery of France would decidly refuse to execute a "razzia" upon "merry England," Peace Society and all, were the order issued and the feat possible. The bandits who, in their own capital, for four shillings and two-pence each, poured drunken volleys into first floor windows, shot at their doors unresisting citizens, bayonetted their flying shrieking country-women, and were dubbed for this new massacre of St. Bartholomew, " heroes" in the order of the day, "glorious children" of the President, and pensionaries of the Legion of Honour, are not likely to be more particular in their dealings with "Perfidious Albion." Those amateur preachers of peace at all price are the elite of monomaniacs. They require keepers, not reporters—their place is Hanwell, not the London Tavern—and their chairman should be Dr. Connolly. 

Oaths appear to share with "costumes" Louis Napoleon's leisure hours. Extensive practice and personal experience render him a high authority in both. In November, 1836, he pledged his "honour" to Louis Philippe that he would trouble France no more. The expedition to Boulogne was the ratification of the promise. On the 20th December, 1848, he swore "in the presence of God and man," to be true to the Republic and the Constitution. On three subsequent occasions, he clinched that oath with now, spontaneous, and uncalled for sanctions. The "honour" pledged to Louis Phillippe having come again into his possession, was pawned to the Republic, for the benefit of it and his "successor." On the 2d of December, "God and man" saw that "honour" a second time redeemed, those asservations verified, and those oaths fulfilled. M. Bonaparte thinks with Hudibras,

He that imposes an oath makes it,
Not he that, for convenience, takes it,
Then how can any man be said,
To break an oath he never made?'

To those who rise to a philosophic view of the obligations of truth and swearers, this reasoning will probably be satisfactory. Perhaps, it is on some such theory that M. Bonaparte, who has imposed on all, "imposes" oaths on every functionary. From Judges to the runners of the Court, from Senators to door-keepers, from Prefects to their touters, from the Council of State to the Gardes Champetres, all swear allegiance to the President and to their places, and plunge with the same readiness into livery and perjury. They conceive, no doubt, that they are bound to follow M. Bonaparte's example, and that the most delicate compliment which they can offer, is to keep their oaths as he has done.

The vulgar perjurer who receives his sentence from a Bench awful with wigs and ermine, imagines, perhaps, that those solemn lips which consign him to the hulks, are the sacred sanctuary of truth and justice. The Judges of France are wiser in their generation. They naturally ask—

Why should not conscience have vacation,
 As well as other Courts i' the nation ?

In their holyday exhilaration those venerable men display quite a juvenile alacrity in swearing. Their president, Portalis, who had sworn in turns to the Empire, the Restoration, and the Revolution of July, and who would have sworn to the Republic, had it wanted him, has twice already with gaité de cour taken an oath to M. Bonaparte. He has attained the age of 75, the grand climacteric of Napoleonian Judges, when the slightest indiscretion may lay them on the shelf. The "head" of the magistracy has been followed by its "body," who have swallowed their oaths in globo. This devotion to their country is the more laudable, as some had attainted M. Bonaparte as traitor in the High Court of Justice, and some had condemned him to imprisonment for life after the invasion of Boulogne.

In all France there are four men who have refused to swear to successful usurpation. Three Republican deputies, Cavaignac, Carnot, and Henon, have protested in a simple and a noble letter, and one poor hussier has resigned his place rather than violate his conscience. Legitimist nobles, Orleanist millionares, the princes of the Church, and the dignitaries of the judgment seat, have "murmured" at the audacity and laughed, we may be sure, at the squeamishness of those recusants, and affronted with indifference the penalties of Heaven and contempt of men. Before this swelling tide of official perjury, France, will become a people of liars, and every man, woman, and child a Jesuit.

With a view to effect, the eve of the assemblage of "the great bodies of the State" was signalised by a decree, which proclaimed the cessation of the state of siege in "Continental France," and announced that, in future, all arrests would be "according to law." As trial by jury has become a myth, as the Judges are punishable and removable, as the habeas corpus for Judge or prisoner would be somewhat difficult to serve, and as "law" means M. Bonaparte's good pleasure, the boon may be placed in the same category with universal suffrage, freedom of election, the "Republic," the Constitution," and many other peculiar Bonapartist blessings.

The "dictatorship" and the "decrees" have terminated, like most public entertainments, by a grand finale. It would be useless to count and most narcotic to detail the titles of the motley group. They range from cod-bangers to cathedral chapters, from pawnbrokers to Presbyterian synods, from the Society Islands to the slums of Paris. They "protect" soda, sugar, and maid-servants—annihilate public meetings and create private monopolies—multiply oaths, dictate prayers, and, stimulate gambling and speculation—declare alike the wages of the Senate, the salaries of chaplains, and the rewards of convicts—muzzle the printers and license the Bank—extend a bonus to cavalry horses and to railway " stags"—amnesty deserters and exile magistrates—settle the duties on salted fish, and unsettle those of the whole community.

M. Bonaparte proclaims to his crouching helots and his gaping dupes that his "mission" is the restoration of "authority." Authority in the Imperial vocabulary is the reign of Jesuitism, hypocrisy, and lies —the deification of perjury and adoration of success—intelligence burked by the gagging of the press, or brutalised by its degradation—morality poisoned by the narcotism of corruption—society stilled by the hand of the police, and the domestic hearth polluted by the spy—liberty crushed beneath the heel of the cuirassier and the gendarme—public slavery rivetted by private vice— the Legislature a sham and swindle, and legislators mere tax gatherers and lackeys—finance a chaos of rapacity, clap-trap, and profusion — the altar partitioned between Loyola and Machiavelli—trickery and violence nick-named "Government"—crime termed "Providence" — and blasphemy called "God."

If this be the "mission" of tyrannies and tyrants, then England has her "mission" too. It is to feed those beacon lights of Liberty, which, dead or dying on the Continent of Europe, blaze only on her head lands ; for she is its Vestal Virgin, and must watch by night and day lest the sacred flame expire.

April 12.

AN ENGLISHMAN.

Empire 24 August 1852

"FUTURISM."

A NEW PHILOSOPHY.

"Futurism" is the thing for those who are looking for a new, strenuous philosophy. We have heard a great deal about the strenuous life. Now we have its religion and its dogma (says the Paris correspondent of the "Daily Telegraph"). M. Marinetti, a Franco-Italian poet, has founded "futurism," which is to be the doctrine of strong men. It will be that of plain men, too, for there is none of your subtle non sense about it, such as Nietzsche persisted in complicating his philosophy with, thereby putting off the strenuous young man in a hurry. For the latter "futurism" is the very thing. Its manifesto says:—
"The essential elements of our poetry are courage, audacity, and rebellion. Literature having hitherto exalted pensive inaction, ecstasy and slumber, we will glorify aggressive motion, feverish insomnia, running, jumping, boxes on the ears, and fisticuffs." Is, by the way, feverish insomnia a good training for pugilists? The manifesto goes on to motoring:
"A racing car, with the pipes of its radiator-like serpents with explosive breathing, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace."
Tastes differ, but one may point out that the portion of a motor which explodes is not usually the radiator. Futurism is expounded in a dozen more articles of faith.
"Fighting only is beautiful. All masterpieces are aggressive. Let us look behind us no longer. Time and space are no more; they died yesterday. War is the sole hygiene of the world. We preach destruction, ideas that kill, and contempt for women. We will pull down all museums and libraries; we will fight moralism, feminism and utilitarian cowardice. We will sing of arsenals, factories, railway stations, iron bridges, steamers, locomotives and aeroplanes.
"We launch this manifesto in Italy because we want to rid Italy of her gangrene of professors, archæologists, ciceroni, and antiquarians. We will rid her of her innumerable museums, which are so many cemeteries. Museums are fit for invalids, not for us, the young, strong futurists, so let fire burn all the books and water flood the museums, and the glorious pictures be swamped. The oldest among us are just 30. We have ten years before us for fulfilling our task. When we are 40 let younger and more daring men than we be good enough to throw us into the waste-paper basket like old manuscripts."
The manifesto is greatly abridged, because the futurists, whatever else they may be, are not pithy. Young and strenuous, Mr. Marinetti writhes like Walt Whitman gone mad. But Whitman sang, instead of telling us what he was going to sing.
Why do not the futurists write their poems about railway trains and aeroplanes, their sermons in steam-engines, and books in racing motor-cars, instead of telling us they mean to write them? The burning of museums, recommended in the manifesto, reminds one of go ahead young Romans to-day, whom nothing irritates so much as to be asked about the Arch of Constantine or the Borghese Palace, and who in reply point out the beauties of their tramway service.

 11 May 1909.