Having realized the lassitude of the times and the vileness of men's souls, Philip has made himself at home. Laws of intimidation have come to suppress our liberties, as I foretold at the time of my farewell speech in the House of Peers, and not a thing has stirred; the Government has resorted to arbitrary measures; it has murdered people in the Rue Transnonain, shot them down in Lyons, instituted numerous newspaper prosecutions; it has arrested private citizens, has kept them for months and years in prison without trial, and has been applauded for doing so. The exhausted country, which no longer understands what is happening, has suffered all. There is hardly a man whom it is not possible to face with his own past. From year to year, from month to month, we have written, said and done the exact opposite of what we used to write, say and do. By dint of having cause for blushing, we have ceased to blush; our inconsistencies escape our memory, so numerous have they become. To have done with it, we adopt the course of declaring that we have never changed, or that we have changed only through the progressive transformation of our ideas and our enlightened apprehension of the times. Events so rapid have aged us so speedily that, when men remind us of our doings of a past period, it seems to us that they are talking of some other man than ourselves: and besides, to have changed is to have done what everybody does. [Sidenote: Louis-Philippe.] Philip did not think it necessary, as did the Restored Branch, to be the master in every village in order to reign; he considered that it was enough to hold sway in Paris: therefore, if ever he could turn the Capital into a warlike town, with an annual roll of sixty thousand pretorians, he would think himself safe. Europe would let him alone, because he would persuade the sovereigns that he was acting with a view to stifling the revolution in its old cradle, while leaving the liberties, independence and honour of France as a pledge in the hands of the foreigners. Philip is a policeman: Europe can spit in his face; he wipes himself, gives thanks and shows his patent as a king. Moreover, he is the only Prince whom the French would, at present, be capable of supporting. The degradation of the elected Head constitutes his strength; we momentarily find in his person enough to satisfy our monarchical habits and our democratic leanings; we obey a power which we believe ourselves to have the right to insult; that is all the liberty that we require: on our knees as a nation, we slap our master's face, re-establishing privilege at his feet, equality on his cheek. Crafty and guileful, a Louis XI. of the age of philosophy, the monarch of our choice dexterously steers his ship over a liquid mire. The Elder Branch of the Bourbons is dried up, save one bud alone; the Younger Branch is rotten. The Head inaugurated at the town-hall has never thought of any one but himself: he sacrifices Frenchmen to what