M. Casimir-Perier did not seek the presidency of the French republic; it was thrust upon him against his protestations by an apparently unanimous mandate of the French people in an emergency which it was thought that he was the best man to meet. That he met it with modesty and courage was testified without dissent. That he afterward did anything to forfeit the confidence and respect that he then inspired is not true, and nobody believes it true. Yet in his letter of resignation he said, and said truly: “For the last six months a campaign of slander and insult has been going on against the army, magistrates, Parliament and the hierarchical Chief of State, and this license to disseminate social hatred continues to be called ‘liberty of thought.’” And with a dignity to which it seems strange that any one could be insensible, he added: “The respect and ambition which I entertain for my country will not allow me to acknowledge that the servants of the country, and he who represents it in the presence of foreign nations, may be insulted every day.” These are manly words. Have we any warrant for demanding or expecting that men of clean life and character will devote themselves to the good of ingrates who pay, and ingrates who permit them to pay, in flung mud? It is hardly credible that among even those persons most infatuated by contemplation of their own merit as pointed out by their thrifty sycophants “liberty of thought” has been carried to that extreme. The right of the State to demand the sacrifice of the citizen’s life is a doctrine as old as the patriotism that concedes it, but the right to require him to forego his good name—that is something new under the sun. “Perhaps in laying down my functions,” said M. Casimir-Perier, “I shall have marked out a path of duty to those who are solicitous for the dignity, power and good name of France in the world.”