We were perfectly well aware of Guizot’s policy, and knew equally well how to turn it to our account. Your _doctrinaire_, _juste-milieu_, or _via-media_ statesmen, who follow expediency, and govern without principle, are generally regarded as wise, prudent, and eminently practical, but they are among the shortest-sighted mortals to be encountered, and are as miserable humbugs as the Genevan banker, M. Necker, who could never understand that government was any thing more than a question of finance, or its administration any thing more than the administration of a joint-stock bank. When there is no serious discontent on the part of subjects, and not the least danger of revolution or insurrection, authority may modify without danger, immediate danger at least, the constitution, in favor of popular power, as the English government did in 1832; but when there is grave discontent, with or without just cause, and a secret conspiracy is forming in behalf of liberal or popular institutions, nothing is less wise or statesmanlike than for authority to make popular concessions with a view of forestalling and disarming it. The disaffected attribute such concessions solely to the weakness and fears of the government, and only rise in their demands, and conspire with the more energy and courage. The government, in times of general discontent, as was the case in Europe from 1839 to 1848, should either concede all and abdicate itself, or concede nothing, because, if it is to defend itself it needs all its prerogatives and the concentration of all its powers. The advice of Guizot was fitted only to weaken the powers that entertained it, and to render them, in the hour of trial, timid and undecided; and it is only where authority is timid, hesitating, and undecided, that a popular revolution can ever succeed. The only wise and even merciful way in such times is, to make, on the first outbreak, a free use of grapeshot and the bayonet. There will be no second outbreak, however powerful or well concerted the conspiracy may have been. Napoleon understood this, and his nephew understands it, also, tolerably well. No man understands it better than Nicholas, Autocrat of all the Russias, although his single unarmed presence is ordinarily all that is necessary to quell an insurrection in his capital.