There are facts of such magnitude, clearness, and prominence, that no human force or fraud can succeed in hiding them. It is in vain that you repeat that the days of fraternity are come; that Democracy, such as you establish it, puts an end to all hostilities or conflicts of classes, and assimilates and unites all orders of citizens. The truth, the terrible truth, gleams through these vain words. Interests, passions, pretensions, situations, and classes conflict on every side, with all the fury of boundless hopes and boundless fears. It is clear that the first acts of the Democratic Republic threaten to plunge herself and us into the chaos of social war. And does she give us arms for our defence, or open to us issues for our escape? I pass over the name she assumes; I turn to the political ideas she proclaims as laws for the government of the state: so far from diminishing my anxiety, these serve but to increase it. For if the banner of the Democratic Republic appears to me to bear the inscription of social war, its constitution seems to me to lead directly to revolutionary despotism. I find in it no distinct powers, possessed of sufficient inherent strength to exercise a reciprocal control; no solid ramparts, under the shelter of which various rights and interests can take root and flourish in safety; no organization of guarantees; no balance of powers in the centre of the state and at the head of government--nothing but a single motive force and various wheels; a master and his agents; nothing between the personal liberty of the citizens and the bare will of the numerical majority: the principle of despotism, checked by the right of insurrection. Such is the position of the Democratic Republic with relation to social order; such, with relation to political order, is the government which it constitutes. What can be the result? Assuredly neither peace nor liberty. When the republic was proclaimed, in the midst of general and profound alarm, one sentiment prevailed. A great number of men attached to the interests of their country, said, or thought, “Let us wait; let us try--perhaps the republic will be different now from what it was heretofore; let the experiment be tried--let it not be disturbed by violence: we shall see the result.” They kept their word; they have excited no troubles, they have raised no obstacles, to disturb or to impede the progress of the republic. The same sentiment prevailed throughout Europe--a sentiment inspired, no doubt, by prudence, and not by any cordiality or hope: but the motives which influenced Europe signify little; the important fact is, that no act, no danger from without troubles the French Republic in the experiment of its foundation.