versal suffrage these go for very little. It is a very different spirit which animates the peasantry, who really rule. To suppose, as many have done, that they are aware that their wages will be lower as soon as capital is dissipated by war, is to attribute to them a knowledge of political economy very far in advance of anything of which our own more thoughtful working class can boast. Bred up in the traditions of a conquering era, accustomed in every hamlet to listen to the boastful reminiscences of some old soldier of Napoleon, hallooed on by their Government, by their priests, and by their slavish press, it would require many a long year of want and many a desolated hearth to make the French nation averse to war.

Prussia and England have, therefore, on their frontiers not merely a plotting, aggressive, unquiet Government, but a population who would cheerfully second that Government's designs, and submit, for a time at least, to all the sacrifices that a war of conquest would involve. That Louis Napoleon himself may be reconciled to war, is evident from the fact that within a reign of seven years he has contrived to have two wars. His throne depends so much on the attachment of the army that he is compelled to keep it alive by an occasional campaign. Indeed he has brought France to that pitch of military strength, that unless he provided some victim for her to practise on, she would prey upon herself. She is in a condition of military plethora, and frequent blood-letting is indispensable to her existence. Six hundred thousand soldiers cannot be maintained in a state of absolute inaction, and it is much better for their native land that their energies should find vent outside its frontiers than within them. If they are not plundering Cologne or storming Antwerp, or making a desperate raid on the coast of Sussex, they will probably be employed in subverting the Government at home, or at least in some of those practical jokes with which the Zouaves and Turcos are wont to enliven their vacant hours, and which keep the peaceful citizens of Lyons and Marseilles almost beside themselves with terror. Louis Napoleon, in short, cannot and dare not be averse to war, for all that he has to rely upon is fond of it. The Empire has two bases, a legal one and a practical one. Its legal base is the peasantry, and its practical base is the army, and whether the bourgeoisie like it or no, both army and peasantry are for war.

In what quarter the war will break out is of course a totally independent question. Because there will probably be a war, it does not necessarily follow that it will in the first instance be a war with England. There is very much to dissuade the Emperor from undertaking such a contest. The

risk is great, and the rewards are insecure. It seems to be generally agreed-in spite of Sir John Burgoyne-that a decisive defeat of the English fleet is an indispensable preliminary, without which it would be madness for a single transport to leave Cherbourg. Even when that is done the invasion will be a difficult matter, but until that is done it is impossible. To place an army on an enemy's coast when at any moment its communications may be cut off, and it may be left to fight with a hostile population for every ounce of food, would be to undertake a Russian campaign over again. It is this indispensable necessity of a naval victory that may well make the Emperor hesitate. French armies can point to a hundred victories in every age and on every soil. The French navy has positively no history at all. It has no traditions except those of failure. In spite of the menacing bravado in which the admirals who commanded in the Adriatic have been lately indulging, a French fleet would meet an English one with something of the same feeling with which the troops of Archduke Charles used to meet Napoleon. They always have been beaten by the English, and it will require something stronger even than French self-confidence to banish the misgiving that the most probable inference from that uniform experience is, that they will be beaten again. It is true that steam may have changed the whole face of affairs-though how steam is to affect the yard-to-yard fights by which Nelson's battles were generally won, it is difficult to see. It may be that the superiority of French ship-building will give them an advantage which it did not give them in the last war. It may be that conscription crews will fight better than volunteer crews. It is possible to enumerate twenty contingencies which will give to the French the advantage which the English have hitherto possessed. Both orators in Parliament and writers in newspapers have shown great ingenuity in the construction of hypotheses, under any of which our fleet is certain to be defeated; and for the purpose of putting us thoroughly on our guard, it is well that they should do so. It is well to familiarize us with our weak points in order that they may cease to be weak. If the effect of such warnings is to frighten all our old women from their propriety, the incident is unfortunate but unavoidable. But the question wears a very different aspect when looked at from the side from which the Emperor of the French must look at it. In challenging England he stakes everything for the sake of which he has braved the incessant vicissitudes of a conspirator's life. If he wins he gains little, if he loses, he loses all. The best he can hope for is a short series of brilliant victories won at a colossal and exhaust

ing cost of blood and treasure. No nation so compact, so vigorous, so resourceful as the England of the present day was ever permanently subdued. The fearful impetus of Napoleon's power at its strongest broke vainly over the sullen, dogged resistance even of so fallen a nationality as Spain. Assuming, as Mr. Sidney Herbert assures us, that Malta and Gibraltar are absolutely impregnable, the Emperor of the French must wield power which his uncle never could command if he dreams of conquering a single strip of English territory. Barren victories like those of Magenta and Solferino, flattering to his people's vanity, fatal to their commerce and revenue, are the best that he can look for as the result of an English war. And he knows the English people too well to believe that he could finish it, as he has finished the Italian war, in one campaign. Absolute emperors may treat war as a game of chess, sacrifice pawns, exchange pieces, give the game up or prolong it as they like. But it is otherwise where the policy is planned by a whole people instead of by an Aulic council. The spirit of a free nation roused by unprovoked aggression to fight for all that their own frugality and industry has won, is not to be quelled by a couple of defeats. Like all commercial countries, England has an intense and nervous horror of war, which betrays itself in concessions and compromises which to an absolute monarch might seem injurious to his honour. But when once the conflict is begun, and the combative passions are aroused, and the nation is thoroughly convinced that there is no guarantee for their own security short of the absolute destruction of their assailant, the Emperor need not go very far back in history to assure himself that they will bear any sacrifice and gird themselves to any effort rather than forego their aim. Even if France should come out of the contest nominally victorious, it is difficult to conceive how the war can be anything else than a death-grapple for both. The combatants are so near, their wealth is so exposed to hostile onslaught, and the ingenuity which men have brought to bear on the science of destruction has so far outstripped all the expedients of defence, that the longed-for humiliation of England can only be purchased by calamities unparalleled in European warfare. A contest between France and England on English soil will be a handkerchief duel, in which neither combatant can well escape with life.

The issue is a terrible one for a French ruler to contemplate, even if his untried navies should be as successful at sea as his armies fresh from the Algerian training-ground have been on land. But it has doubtless not escaped the consideration of the Emperor that the issue may possibly be the other way. The

sea is no 'Via Sacra' to a French navy. Aboukir and Trafalgar are sorry memories to substitute for Marengo and Lodi. And if fortune should be as constant to England on her element as she has been to France on hers-if the conduct and courage of English seamen are true to their glorious traditions—if it should turn out that neither big dockyards, nor iron-cased rams can make a maritime nation, what fate has the Emperor to expect? To France it will matter comparatively little. She never was great in naval warfare, and no future defeats can make her less so. But to the Emperor it is utter, absolute, irretrievable ruin. His throne is built on the memory of former glory, and can withstand anything except disaster and disgrace; and of all disgrace that which it can endure least is a defeat at the hands of England. Frenchmen will never forgive the man who shall reopen the wounds of Waterloo,

We incline, therefore, to the belief that it will not be England against whom his first assault will be directed, though of course it is scarcely possible that any prosecution of his present aggressive policy can fail to embroil us with him at last. England does not satisfy the conditions necessary in a victim destined to the honour of upholding the Napoleonic dynasty. An enemy that requires to be beaten at sea is not at all the sort of enemy the Imperial policy requires. A naval defeat would alienate the affections of the French people, but a naval triumph would not satisfy the aspirations of the French army. Moreover, the temper in which the peace of Villafranca has been received in many parts of France must have shown the Government how little they can count on the French people always accepting the mere renown of a victorious campaign as full value for the manifold miseries of war. They require something more substantial than the addition of another historic battle-field to a catalogue already long enough for the greediest ambition. The first Napoleon gave them greatness as well as glory in exchange for all their sacrifices. Each new victory was not merely a new instalment of the bubble reputation. It had its palpable results in the shape of large addition, practical if not actual, to the territory of France. In spite of the high disinterested tone, which for some time the French newspapers have obsequiously assumed, there has been a strong feeling of late in France that the Italian campaign was a sentimental folly. To spill so much blood, and get nothing either in the way of territory or of plunder in return, is a thing which no French army ever did before, either in Italy or elsewhere. And the Emperor's answer to the Corps d'Etat, when he sulkily alludes to the readiness of the great European powers to dispute any conquests that he

might make, shows that he shares in this respect the laudable aspirations of his people. We therefore lean to the belief that when next the Emperor gives a public proof that the Empire is peace, it will be by attacking some neighbour whose territory is easy to conquer, and near enough to keep-some Naboth whose vineyard would introduce a convenient rectification' into the frontier line of France. And we are the more confirmed in this belief, by the great and somewhat_ ostentatious activity prevailing in the French dockyards. It has been well said that the force of education is so strong that whatever the Emperor does, he does it like a conspirator. He carries out with instinctive care the evangelical precept not to let his right hand know what his left hand doeth. In fact, his favourite amusement in hours of grim relaxation seems to be to make his cabinet ministers look foolish by taking the most important steps of state policy, without allowing them to obtain the slightest inkling of what he is about. As he does everything else so he also makes peace and war. When he has fully resolved on peace his way of showing it is to order a peculiarly large stock of warlike matériel to the front. When after a sufficient interval of peace he has selected the new victim on whom he next intends to spring, he immediately walks off with menacing gestures at some neighbour in an opposite direction. England is a very convenient subject for these feigned attacks. Until she is actually assailed she loves peace very dearly, if not on strictly Christian principles, at least upon commercial ones, which are their modern and improved substitute; and so long as her assailant does not go beyond gestures and hard words, it is almost as difficult to begin a quarrel with her as it is to end one. Cherbourg and the Charles et Georges proved a very effective stalking-horse for his preparations against Austria, and no doubt he thinks that a similar device will answer very well again. Meanwhile neither time nor money is thrown away, for it must always be a very important link in his plans to secure, if not the aid, at least the neutrality of England. But we suspect that if an attack on England was really intended, Cherbourg would have been still officially proclaimed to be incomplete, and the vast fleet of transports of which we hear would have been built exclusively at Toulon. Louis Napoleon is not over-scrupulous as to the employment of either threats or deeds of violence, but he very rarely uses both against the same antagonist. Never to raise his hand until he is quite certain of killing has been the unvarying maxim of his reign. It may suit his purpose very well to threaten England and to frighten her; and within certain limits the result is not a very difficult

VOL. II. No. III.

C