"Ces petits souverains qu'il fait pour un année, Voyant d'un temps si court leur puissance bornée, Des plus heureux desseins font avorter le fruit, De peur de le laiser à celui qui le suit; Comme ils ont peu de part aux biens dont ils ordonnent, Dans le champs du public largement ils moissonnent; Assurés que chacun leur pardonne aisément, Espérant à son tour un pareil traitement; Le pire des états, c'est l'état populaire."[13] [13] CORNEILLE, _Cinna_, Act ii., scene 1. Lamartine, regarding the march of democracy as universal and inevitable, is noways disconcerted by the uniform failure of all attempts in old communities to establish it, or the dreadful catastrophes to which they have invariably led. These are merely the breaking of the waves of the advancing tide; but the rise of the flood is not the less progressive and inevitable. He would do well to consider, however, whether there is not a limit to human suffering; whether successive generations will consent to immolate themselves and their children for no other motive than that of advancing an abstract principle, or vindicating privileges for the people fatal to their best interests; and whether resisted attempts, and failures at the establishment of republican institutions, will not, in the end, lead to _a lasting_ apathy and despair in the public mind. Certain it is, that this was the fate of popular institutions in Greece, in Rome, and modern Italy: all of which fell under the yoke of servitude, from a settled conviction, founded on experience, that anything was preferable to the tempests of anarchy. Symptoms, and those too of the most unequivocal kind, may be observed of a similar disposition in the great majority, at least of the rural population, both in France and England. The election of Prince Louis Napoleon by four millions out of six millions of electors, in the former country--the quiet despair with which measures of the most ruinous kind to general industry are submitted to in the latter, are so many proofs of this disposition. The bayonets of Changarnier, the devastating measures of free trade and a restricted currency, are submitted to in both countries, because anything is better than shaking the foundations of government.