curious and thoughtful eye. He was struck by the resemblance which this
nation--so civilized, so thoroughly European--bears in one respect to the
despotisms of the East: the convulsions of the capital decide the fate of
the country; Paris is the tyrant of France. He saw in this inflammable
concentration of power, which must ever be pregnant with great evils, one
of the causes why the revolutions of that powerful and polished people
are so incomplete and unsatisfactory, why, like Cardinal Fleury, system
after system, and Government after Government--

. . . "floruit sine fructu,
Defloruit sine luctu."*

* "Flourished without fruit, and was destroyed without regret."

Maltravers regarded it as a singular instance of perverse ratiocination,
that, unwarned by experience, the French should still persist in
perpetuating this political vice; that all their policy should still be
the policy of Centralization,--a principle which secures the momentary
strength, but ever ends in the abrupt destruction of States. It is, in
fact, the perilous tonic, which seems to brace the system, but drives the
blood to the head,--thus come apoplexy and madness. By centralization
the provinces are weakened, it is true,--but weak to assist as well as to
oppose a government, weak to withstand a mob. Nowhere, nowadays, is a
mob so powerful as in Paris: the political history of Paris is the
history of snobs. Centralization is an excellent quackery for a despot
who desires power to last only his own life, and who has but a
life-interest in the State; but to true liberty and permanent order
centralization is a deadly poison. The more the provinces govern their
own affairs, the more we find everything, even to roads and post-horses,
are left to the people; the more the Municipal Spirit pervades every vein