the standard to which all the higher degrees are adjusted; and diversity and inequality are abolished, for the supposed advantage of that which is the least and the lowest in the scale! Do those who hold such language serve--do they even understand--the cause which they affect to advocate? Is it by such means that we can advance, or even barely keep our ground, on that glorious path of civilization in which labour acquired its proper rank and dignity? Do we not, on the contrary, mutilate, degrade, and disgrace labour, when we strip it of a part of its noblest claims, and substitute in their stead pretensions which are not only absurd and preposterous, but mean, in spite of their insolence? Lastly, does not such language show a gross misconception and violent perversion of the natural facts on which civil society in France is founded? This, though admitting unity of laws and equality of rights, assuredly never pretended to abolish that variety of faculties, merits, and destinies, which is one of the mysterious laws of God, and the inevitable result of the free will of man. Let us now turn from civil to political society; that is, the relation existing between men, in virtue of their interests, opinions and sentiments, and the ruling power under which they live. Let us endeavour here to determine also the real and essential elements of which society is now composed in France. In a free country, or in one struggling to become free, the elements of political society are political parties, in the widest and highest acceptation of the term. Legally, there are now no other parties in France than those inherent in every constitutional state; the party of the Government and that of the Opposition. There are neither Legitimists nor Orleanists. The Republic exists, and will not suffer the principle of its existence to be attacked; and as this is the indisputable right of every established government, it is by no means my intention to contest or to infringe it. But there are things so inherent in society, that prohibitive laws, even when obeyed, fail to eradicate them. There are political parties of which the germ lies so deeply buried, and the roots so widely spread, that they do not die, even when they are no longer apparent.