Mirabeau, Barnave, Napoleon, and Lafayette, who died at distant and very dissimilar periods, in bed or on the scaffold, in their own country or in exile, all died under the influence of one sentiment--a sentiment of profound melancholy. They thought their hopes deceived, their labours abortive. They were assailed by doubts of the success of their cause, and by misgivings as to the future. King Louis-Philippe reigned above seventeen years, for more than eleven of which I had the honour to be his minister. If to-morrow it pleased God to summon us into his presence, should we quit this earth very confident in the future destiny and the constitutional order of our country? Is then the French Revolution destined to give birth only to doubt and deception?--to bury all its triumphs under ruins? Yes: so long as France shall suffer the true and the false, the upright and the perverse, the practicable and the chimerical, the salutary and the pestilent to be constantly mingled and confounded in her opinions, her institutions, and the government of her affairs, such will be the unfailing and inevitable result. Until a people which has gone through a great revolution has passed on the principles, the passions, and the doctrines which have led to this revolution, a sentence like that which shall be passed on all human things at the Last Day, “severing the wheat from the tares, and the corn from the straw that shall be cast into the fire,” it can never surmount the perils, nor reap the advantages, of the struggle in which it has been engaged. So long as this judgment is deferred, chaos reigns; and chaos, if prolonged in the midst of a people, would be death. Chaos is now concealed under one word--Democracy. This is now the sovereign and universal word which all parties invoke, all seek to appropriate as a talisman. The Monarchists say, “Our Monarchy is a Democratic Monarchy: therefore it differs essentially from the ancient Monarchy, and is adapted to the modern condition of society.” The Republicans say, “The Republic is Democracy governing itself. This is the only form of government in harmony with a democratic society, its principles, its sentiments, and its interests.” Socialists, Communists, and Montagnards require that the republic should be a pure and absolute democracy. This, in their estimation, is the condition of its legitimacy. Such is the power of the word Democracy, that no government or party dares to raise its head, or believes its own existence possible, if it does not bear that word inscribed on its banner; and those who carry that banner aloft with the greatest ostentation and to the extremest limits, believe themselves to be stronger than all the rest of the world.