In the next place, the bloodshed and confiscation of the first Revolution have, as subsequent writers have repeatedly demonstrated, so completely extinguished the elements of national resistance in France, that the dangers which threatened its progress and ensanguined its steps no longer exist. It was no easy matter to overturn the monarchy and church of old France. It was interwoven with the noblest, because the most disinterested feelings of our nature,—it touched the chords of religion and loyalty,—it was supported by historic names, and the lustre of ancient descent,—it rested on the strongest and most dignified attachments of modern times. The overthrow of such a fabric, like the destruction of the monarchy of Great Britain at this time, could not be effected but by the shedding of torrents of blood. Despite the irresolution of the king, the defection of the army, the conquest of the capital, and the emigration of the noblesse, accordingly, a most desperate resistance arose in the provinces; and the revolution was consolidated only by the _mitrillades_ of Lyons and Toulon, the _noyades_ of the Loire, the proscriptions of the Convention, the blood of La Vendée. France was not then enslaved by its capital. But now these elements of resistance to the government of the dominant multitude at Paris no longer exist. The nobles have been destroyed and their estates confiscated; the clergy are reduced to humble stipendiaries, not superior in station or influence to village schoolmasters; the corporations of towns are dissolved; the house of peers has degenerated into a body of well-dressed and titled employés. Six millions of separate landed proprietors, without leaders, wealth, information, or influence, have seized upon and now cultivate the soil of France. Power is, over the whole realm, synonymous with office. Every appointment in the kingdom flows from Paris. In these circumstances, how is it possible that resistance to the decrees of the sovereign power, in possession of the armed force of the capital, the treasury, the telegraph, and the post-office, can arise in France elsewhere than in the capital? Civil war, therefore, on an extended scale over the country, is improbable; and the victorious leaders of the Revolution, delivered from immediate apprehension, save in their own metropolis, of domestic danger, have no motive for shocking the feelings of mankind, and endangering their relations with foreign powers, by needless and unnecessary deeds of cruelty. It was during the struggle with the patricians that the proscriptions of Sylla and Marius deluged Italy with blood. After they were destroyed, by mutual slaughter and the denunciations of the Triumvirate, though there was often the greatest possible tyranny and oppression under the emperors, there was none of the wholesale destruction of life which disgraced the republic, when the rival factions fronted each other in yet undiminished strength.