The manner in which the French President became Emperor of the French has been much criticized. That some of his deeds, at the close of 1851, and in the early part of 1852, deserve censure, few of his intelligent admirers will be disposed to deny. His defence is, that it was impossible for him to act differently without forfeiting his life. The contest, in 1851, had assumed such a character, that it was evident that the one party or the other must be destroyed. We have M. Guizot's authority for saying that in French political contests no quarter is ever given, and that the vanquished become as the dead. French history shows that there is no exaggeration in this statement, and that every political leader in France must fight for his life as well as for his post, the loss of the latter placing the former in great peril. This is a characteristic of French politics to which sufficient attention has not been paid, in discussing the morality of French statesmen. In England, for many generations, and in the United States, down to the decision of the last Presidential election, a constitutional opposition was as much a political institution, and as completely a part of the machinery of government, as the administration itself. Formerly, opposition was not without its dangers in England, and, whichever party had possession of the government, it sought to crush out its opponents with all the vigor and venom of an American slavocrat. Charles I. sent Sir John Eliot to the Tower, by way of punishing him for the opposition he had made to unconstitutional government; and there he died, and there he was buried. The execution of Strafford, though as just a deed as ever was performed, must be allowed to have resulted from proceedings that belong to French politics rather than to those of England since the times of the Tudors. All through the reigns of the Stuart kings, and down to the Revolution, parties fought for safety as well as for spoils. A defeat was then often followed by a butchery. Hume, speaking of the political warfare that happened just before the Revolution of 1688, says that the "two parties, actuated by mutual rage, but cooped up within the narrow limits of the law, levelled with poisoned daggers the most deadly blows against each other's breast, and buried in their factious divisions all regard to truth, honor, and humanity." This evil was gradually, but surely, removed from English politics by the triumph of the constitutional party. It lingered, however, for half a century, and after the accession of the House of Hanover caused the impeachment of Oxford and the exile of Bolingbroke and Ormond. The last pronounced appearance of it was in 1742, when Sir Robert Walpole's enemies, not content with his political fall, sought his life. They failed utterly, and for one hundred and twenty years the course of English politics has been strictly constitutional, an opposition party being, as it were, the complement of the administration or ministry.