the old Conventionist of '93 was forced, by the views of the men of whom
he so strangely found himself the chief, to become in effect the ally of
the Austrian Kaiser and the Russian Czar. The Italians, who were seeking
only to get rid of "barbarian" rule, and the Hungarians, who were
contending for the preservation of a polity as old as the English
Constitution against the destructives of the imperial court, were held
up to the world as men desirous in their zeal for revolution to overturn
all existing institutions! Aristocrats with pedigrees that shamed those
of the Bourbon and the Romanoff were spoken of in language that might
possibly have been applicable to the lazzaroni of Naples, that lazzaroni
being on the side of the "law and order" classes. As General Cavaignac
did nothing to win the affections of the French people, as he was the
mere agent of men rendered fierce by fear, it cannot be regarded as
strange, that, when the Presidential election took place, he found
himself nowhere in the race with Louis Napoleon. He was deserted even by
a large portion of the men whose work he had done so well, but who
saw in the new candidate for their favor one who could become a more
powerful protector of property than the African general,--one who had a
name of weight, not merely with the army, but with that multitudinous
peasant class from which the French army is mainly conscribed, and
which, containing numerous small property-holders, is fanatically
attached to the name of Napoleon. Thus the cry of "Property in danger"
ended, in 1851, in the restoration of open despotism, which every
sensible observer of French affairs expected after Louis Napoleon was
made President, his Presidency being looked upon only as a pinch-beck
imitation of the Consulate of 1799-1804. This is the ordinary course
of events in old countries: revolution, fears of Agrarianism, and
the rushing into the jaws of the lion in order to be saved from the
devouring designs of a ghost.