A great popular movement, in 1888, did nearly overthrow the Republic for the benefit of General Boulanger, but it has survived and triumphed over the attacks of all parties. Various reasons contribute to the maintenance of the present Republic. In the first place, of the conflicting factions none is strong enough to crush the rest. In the second place, the head of the State being purely decorative, and possessing no power, it is impossible to attribute to him the evils from which the country may suffer, and to feel sure that matters would be different were he overthrown. Finally, as the supreme power is distributed among thousands of hands, responsibilities are so disseminated that it would be difficult to know where to begin. A tyrant can be overthrown, but what can be done against a host of little anonymous tyrannies? If we wished to sum up in a word the great transformations which have been effected in France by a century of riots and revolutions, we might say that individual tyranny, which was weak and therefore easily overthrown, has been replaced by collective tyrannies, which are very strong and difficult to destroy. To a people avid of equality and habituated to hold its Governments responsible for every event individual tyranny seemed insupportable, while a collective tyranny is readily endured, although generally much more severe. The extension of the tyranny of the State has therefore been the final result of all our revolutions, and the common characteristic of all systems of government which we have known in France. This form of tyranny may be regarded as a racial ideal, since successive upheavals of France have only fortified it. Statism is the real political system of the Latin peoples, and the only system that receives all suffrages. The other forms of government--republic, monarchy, empire--represent empty labels, powerless shadows. PART III THE RECENT EVOLUTION OF THE REVOLUTIONARY PRINCIPLES CHAPTER I THE PROGRESS OF DEMOCRATIC BELIEFS SINCE THE REVOLUTION 1. Gradual Propagation of Democratic Ideas after the Revolution. Ideas which are firmly established, incrusted, as it were, in men's minds, continue to act for several generations. Those which resulted from the French Revolution were, like others, subject to this law. Although the life of the Revolution as a Government was short, the influence of its principles was, on the contrary, very long- lived. Becoming a form of religious belief, they profoundly modified the orientation of the sentiments and ideas of several generations.