In France, after Louis Philippe fell, the country was left a prey to four factions or parties. One demanded an absolute monarchy; another demanded a parliamentary monarchy; a third demanded a military empire, based on universal suffrage; a fourth demanded a republic. The partisans of the republic triumphed in the first instance. But it fell, a victim to the voracity of its own children. The Government of Lamartine was poetic and Utopian, [Illustration: LOUIS KOSSUTH (1850).] and its experiment of creating national workshops in which the workers were to be paid by the State, was not only fantastic but fatal. The State found it had no work to give. It found it had no money to spend in wages; and the artisans of the national establishments were accordingly advised to join the army. This disastrous adventure in Socialism was followed by another insurrection in Paris--in which, by the way, the Archbishop of Paris and thousands of less eminent persons were slain. What Prince Bismarck would call the “psychological moment” for the interposition of a clever adventurer with a suggestion of compromise had manifestly arrived. Accordingly, the advent of Prince Charles Louis Bonaparte was hailed with a sense of relief by all parties--wearied to despair by the futile conflicts of factions. Although M. Grévy vainly endeavoured by a motion in the Chamber to procure the proscription of the Prince, his Highness was elected President of the Republic on the 10th of December, 1848, by five and a half million out of seven and a half million votes. He took the oath to preserve the Republic, without compunction. But when the year 1850 opened, he was busily plotting for its destruction, and manufacturing failure for its institutions.