We have tried everything:--Republic--Empire--Constitutional Monarchy. We are beginning our experiments anew. To what must we ascribe their ill success? In our own times, before our own eyes, in three of the greatest nations in the world, these three same forms of government--Constitutional Monarchy in England, the Empire in Russia, and the Republic in North America--endure and prosper. Have we the monopoly of all impossibilities? Yes; so long as we remain in the chaos in which we are plunged, in the name, and by the slavish idolatry, of Democracy; so long as we can see nothing in society but Democracy, as if that were its sole ingredient; so long as we seek in government nothing but the domination of Democracy, as if that alone had the right and the power to govern. On these terms the Republic is equally impossible as the Constitutional Monarchy, and the Empire, as the Republic; for all regular and stable government is impossible. And liberty--legal and energetic liberty--is no less impossible than stable and regular government. The world has seen great and illustrious communities reduced to this deplorable condition; incapable of supporting any legal and energetic liberty, or any regular and stable government; condemned to interminable and sterile political oscillations, from the various shades and forms of anarchy to the equally various forms of despotism. For a heart capable of any feeling of pride or dignity, I cannot conceive a more cruel suffering than to be born in such an age. Nothing remains but to retire to the sanctuary of domestic life, and the prospects of religion. The joys and the sacrifices, the labours and the glories of public life exist no more.