Every pretension of this kind must be withdrawn, not by one only, but by all of the contending parties. The great elements of society among us--the old aristocracy, the middle classes, and the people--must completely renounce the hope of excluding and annihilating each other. Let them vie with each other in influence; let each maintain its position and its rights, or even endeavour to extend and improve them, for in such efforts consists the political life of a country. But there must be an end of all radical hostility: they must resign themselves to live together, side by side, in the ranks of the government as well as in civil society. This is the first condition of social peace. How, it may be asked, can this condition be satisfied? How can the different elements of our society be brought to tolerate each other’s existence, and to fulfil their several functions in the government of the country? I reply, by such an organization of that government as may assign to each its place and functions; may concede something to the wishes, while it imposes limits to the ambition, of all. I am here met by an idea, perhaps the most false and fatal of all those current in our days on the subject of constitutional organization. It is this:--“National unity involves political unity. There is but one people: there can exist at the head and in the name of this people, but one power.” This is the idea which most completely characterizes both revolution and despotism. The Convention and Louis XIV. exclaimed alike, “L’Etat, c’est moi.” It is as false as it is tyrannical. A nation is not a vast aggregate of men, consisting of so many thousands or millions, occupying a certain extent of ground, and concentrated in, and represented by, a unit, called king or assembly. A nation is a great organic body, formed by the union within one country of certain social elements which assume the shape and constitution naturally impressed upon them by the primitive laws of God and the free acts of man. The diversity of these elements is, as we have just seen, one of the essential facts resulting from those laws; and is absolutely inconsistent with the false and tyrannous unity which it is proposed to establish at the centre of government, as representative of that society in which it never exists. What then, it is said, must all the elements of society, all the groups of which it is naturally composed, all the various classes, professions, and opinions it contains, be represented in the government by powers corresponding to each?