imagined by Fourier and Cabet, if I might choose my 'pis aller.' All
these speculators (even Louis Blanc, who is one of the most rational)
would revolutionalise, not merely countries, but the elemental
conditions of humanity, it seems to me; none of them seeing that
antagonism is necessary to all progress. A man, in walking, must set one
foot before another, and in climbing (as Dante observed long ago) the
foot behind 'è sempre il più basso.' Only the gods (Plato tells us) keep
both feet joined together in moving onward. It is not so, and cannot be
so, with men.

But I think that not only in relation to the socialists, but to the
monarchies, is L.N. the choice of the French people. I think that they
will not _bear_ the monarchies, they will not have either of them, they
put them away. It seems to me that the French people is essentially
democratical, and that by the vote in question they never meant to give
away either rights or liberties. The extraordinary part of the actual
position is that the Government, with these ugly signs of despotism in
its face, stands upon the democracy (is no 'military despotism,'
therefore, in any sense, as the English choose to say), and may be
thrown, and will be thrown, on that day when it disappoints the popular
expectation. For my part, I am hopeful both for this reason and for
others. I hope we shall do better, when there is greater calm; that
presently there will be relaxation where there is stringency, and room
to breathe and speak. At present it is a dictatorship, and we can't
expect at such a time the ease and liberty of a regular government. The
constitution itself may be modified, as the very terms of it imply, and
the laws of the Press not carried out. Even as it is, all the English
papers, infamous in their abuse of the Government (because of their
falsifications and exaggerations properly called infamous) and highly
immoral in their tone towards France generally, come in as usual,