‘Liberty will follow the same march as the Christian religion. Armed with death from the ancient society of Rome, it for a long while excited the hatred and fear of the people. At last, by force of martyrdoms and persecutions, the religion of Christ penetrated into the conscience and the soul; it soon had kings and armies at its orders, and Constantine and Charlemagne bore it triumphant throughout Europe. Religion then laid down her arms of war. It laid open to all the principles of peace and order which it contained; it became the prop of Government, as it was the organising element of society. Thus will it be with liberty. In 1793 it frightened people and sovereigns alike; thus, having clothed itself in a milder garb, _it insinuated itself everywhere in the train of our battalions_. In 1815 all parties adopted its flag, and armed themselves with its moral force--covered themselves with its colours. The adoption was not sincere, and liberty was soon obliged to reassume its warlike accoutrements. With the contest their fears returned. Let us hope that they will soon cease, and that liberty will soon resume her peaceful standards, to quit them no more. ‘The Emperor Napoleon contributed more than any one else towards accelerating the reign of liberty, by saving the moral influence of the Revolution, and diminishing the fears which it imposed. Without the Consulate and the Empire, the Revolution would have been only a grand drama, leaving grand revolutions but no traces: the Revolution would have been drowned in the counter-revolution. The contrary, however, was the case. Napoleon rooted the Revolution in France, and introduced, throughout Europe, the principal benefits of the crisis of 1789. To use his own words, “He purified the Revolution,” he confirmed kings, and ennobled people. He purified the Revolution in separating the truths which it contained from the passions that, during its delirium, disfigured it. He ennobled the people in giving them the consciousness of their force, and those institutions which raise men in their own eyes. The Emperor may be considered as the Messiah of the new ideas; for--and we must confess it--in the moments immediately succeeding a social revolution, it is not so essential to put rigidly into practice all the propositions resulting from the new theory, but to become master of the regenerative genius, to identify one’s self with the sentiments of the people, and boldly to direct them towards the desired point. To accomplish such a task _your fibre should respond to that of the people_, as the Emperor said; you should feel like it, your interests should be so intimately raised with its own, that you should vanquish or fall together.’