This is exactly the condition to which France was brought during the Reign of Terror, when the _whole_ inhabitants of Paris fell as a burden on the government, and the cost of the 680,000 rations daily issued to them, exceeded that of the fourteen armies which combated on the frontiers for the Republic. In those days the misery in Paris, the result of the Revolution, was so extreme, that the bakers' shops were besieged day and night without intermission by a famishing crowd; and the unhappy applicants were kept all night waiting during a severe frost, with a rope in their hands, and the thermometer often down at 5° Fahrenheit, to secure their place for the distribution when the doors were opened. There is nothing new in the condition of France and Paris at this time: it has been seen and experienced in every age of the world; it has been familiar to the East for three thousand years. The principle that the state is the universal proprietor, the middle class the _employés_ of government, and the labouring class the servants of the state, is exactly the oriental system of government. It is just the satraps and fellahs of Persia--the mandarins and peasants of China--the zemindars and ryots of Hindostan over again. Exact parallels to the armed and insolent rabble who now lord it over Paris, and through it over France, may be found in the Prætorians of Rome--the Mamelukes of Egypt--the Janissaries of Constantinople. The visions of perfectibility and utopian projects of Louis Blanc, Lamartine, and Ledru Rollin, have already landed the social interests of France in the straits of the Reign of Terror--its practical government in the armed despotism of the Algerine pirates, or the turbulent sway of the Sikh soldiery.