same end, as soon as the watchword has been given them. But their
alarm is a mistake, and it is on this point alone that I condemn them,
for they are right in their wish to enjoy power without permitting the
middle class to come on a fixed day from the depth of each of their
six kingdoms, to torment them. How could men of such remarkable talent
fail to divine that the constitutional comedy has in it a moral of
profound meaning, and to see that it is the very best policy to give
the age a bone to exercise its teeth upon! I think exactly as they do
on the subject of sovereignty. A power is a moral being as much
interested as a man is in self-preservation. This sentiment of
self-preservation is under the control of an essential principle which
may be expressed in three words--_to lose nothing_. But in order to
lose nothing, a power must grow or remain indefinite, for a power which
remains stationary is nullified. If it retrogrades, it is under the
control of something else, and loses its independent existence. I am
quite as well aware, as are those gentlemen, in what a false position
an unlimited power puts itself by making concessions; it allows to
another power whose essence is to expand a place within its own sphere
of activity. One of them will necessarily nullify the other, for every
existing thing aims at the greatest possible development of its own
forces. A power, therefore, never makes concessions which it does not
afterwards seek to retract. This struggle between two powers is the
basis on which stands the balance of government, whose elasticity so
mistakenly alarmed the patriarch of Austrian diplomacy, for comparing
comedy with comedy the least perilous and the most advantageous
administration is found in the seesaw system of the English and of the
French politics. These two countries have said to the people, 'You are
free;' and the people have been satisfied; they enter the government
like the zeros which give value to the unit. But if the people wish to
take an active part in the government, immediately they are treated,