well-to-do citizens. There was not a man in Paris who did not tremble for his property and his life. Householders feared the very servants in their homes. Between these days of ferocity intervened a day of sentiment. On May 21, 1848, the Assembly attended a Feast of Concord. There were carts filled with allegorical figures, there were processions, there were embraces; the whole town, soldiers, national guards, gardes mobiles, armed workmen, a million of men or more, passed in array before the deputies. The feast was a feast of concord, but every deputy had provided himself with pistols or some weapon of defence. This was the occasion when we are told by the reporter of the scene, 'Carnot said to me with a touch of that silliness (_niaiserie_) which is always to be found mixed up with the virtues of honest democrats, "Believe me, my dear colleague, you must always trust the people." I remember I answered him rather rudely, "Ah! why didn't you remind me of that on the day before May 15?"' The anecdote is told by the greatest political thinker whom France has produced since the days of Montesquieu. 'Trust in the people' did not appear the last word of political wisdom to Alexis de Tocqueville.[133] The Gladstonian pleas to which answer has been made are, it will be said, arguments not in favour of our new constitution, but in support of Home Rule. The remark is just; it points to a curious weakness in the reasoning of Gladstonians. They adduce many reasons of more or less weight for conceding some kind of Home Rule to Ireland. But few indeed are the reasons put forward, either in the House of Commons or elsewhere, in favour of the actual Home Rule Bill of 1893. As to the merits of this definite measure Ministerialists show a singular reticence. It may be that they wish to save time and hold that the measure commends itself without any recommendation by force of its own inherent merits. But to a critic of the new constitution another explanation suggests itself. Can it be possible that Ministerialists themselves are not certain what are the fixed principles of the new policy? Everything about it is indefinite, vague, uncertain. Who can say with assurance what Gladstonians understand by Imperial supremacy? Is there or is there not any idea of excluding Ulster from the operation of the Bill? Is it or is it not a principle that members from Ireland shall be summoned to Westminster? Are the Irish members, if summoned, to vote on all matters, or on some only? To each of these questions the only answer that can be given is--nobody knows. But in this state of ignorance it is natural and excusable that apologists should confine themselves to general lines of defence. No politician who respects himself would willingly risk a vigorous apology for the special provisions of a particular measure, when, for aught he knows, the provision which he thinks essential turns out to be an unimportant detail, and is liable to sudden variation. FOOTNOTES: