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that it intends to substitute a democratic equality for oligarchic or oppressive, unjust institutions, and the liberal principle may seem to be on the side of the levelling ruler. This was doubtless the case when, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the power of the crown made itself independent on the Continent of Europe. Instead of transforming the institutions, or of substituting new ones, the governments levelled them to the ground, and that unhappy centralization was the consequence, which now draws every attempt at liberty back into its vortex. At other times, monarchs or governments disguise their plans, to destroy liberty in the garb of liberty. Thus James the Second endeavoured to break through the restraints of the constitution, or perhaps ultimately to establish the Catholic religion in England by proclaiming liberty of conscience for all, against the Established Church. Austria at one time pressed apparently liberal measures for the peasants against the Polish nobles. In such cases, governments are always sure to find numerous persons that do not look beyond this single measure, nor to the means by which it is attempted; yet the legality and constitutionality of these means are of great and frequently of greater importance than the measure itself. Even historians are frequently captivated by the apparently liberal character of a single measure, forgetting that the dykes of an institutional government once being broken through, the whole country may soon be flooded by an irresistible influx of arbitrary power. We have a parallel in the criminal trial, in which the question how we arrive at the truth is of paramount importance with the object of arriving at truth.

On the other hand, all endeavours to throw more and more unregulated and unarticulated power into the hands.

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of the primary masses, to deprive a country more and more of a gradually evolving character, in one word, to establish more and more a direct, absolute, unmodified popular power, amount to an abandonment of selfgovernment, and an approach to imperatorial sovereignty, whether there be actually a Cæsar or not--to popular absolutism, whether the absolutism remain for any length of time in the hands of a sweeping majority, subject, of course, to a skilful leader, as in Athens after the Peloponnesian war, or whether it rapidly pass over into the hands of a broadly named Cæsar. Imperatorial sovereignty may be at a certain period more plausible than the sovereignty founded upon divine right, but they are both equally hostile to self-government; and the only means to resist the inroads of power is, under the guidance of Providence and a liberty-wedded people, the same means which in so many cases withstood the inroads of the barbarians, namely, the institution-the self-sustaining and organic systems of laws.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

CENTRALIZATION. INFLUENCE OF CAPITAL CITIES.

We have seen in how great a degree French centralism has produced an incapacity for self-rule, according to one of the most distinguished statesmen of France herself. This centralism, in conjunction with imperatorial sovereignty, has produced some peculiar effects upon a nation so intelligent, ardent, and so wedded to system as the French are. And before I conclude this treatise, I beg leave to offer a few remarks, which naturally suggest themselves, and are connected either with centralism or imperatorial sovereignty, both so prominent at this moment in France.

Centralism has given to Paris an importance which no capital possesses in any other country. The French themselves often say, Paris is France; foreigners always say so; and to them as well as to those French people who desire to possess themselves of as much of all that French civilization produces, at one round, this is, doubtless, very agreeable and instructive. Paris is brilliant, as centralism altogether frequently is; Paris naturally flatters the vanity of the French; Paris stands with many people for France, because they see nothing of France but Paris. Centralization appears most imposing in Paris-in the buildings, in demonstrations, in rapidity of execution, and in an æsthetical point of view.

Upon a close examination of history, however, we shall find that it has been not only a natural effect of centralism, but an object of all absolute rulers over intelligent races, to beautify the capital and raise its activity to the highest point. The effect is remarkable. The government of King Jerome, of Westphalia-now again prince of France -was one of the most ruinous that has ever existed, and yet long after the downfall of that ephemeral kingdom, every disapproval of it was answered by a reference to the embellishment of Cassel, the capital.

Capital cities, and residences of kings and even petty princes, have in this respect the same effect which single large fortunes or single busy places have on the minds of the superficial, in point of political economy. They are palpable, and strike the mind; yet they prove nothing of themselves. There is not a war, however ruinous, that does not produce some gigantic gains of bankers, contractors, and able speculators. They are often pointed out to prove that a certain war has not been fatal to general prosperity. There have never existed greater fortunes than those of some princely Roman senators, with their latifundia, in the very worst periods of the Roman empire, amidst universal ruin, and when the country was fast declining to that state in which the tillers of the soil abandoned their farms, because unable to pay the taxes, and in which Italy, with the utmost exertion of the government, was not able to raise an army against invading hordes.

Whenever we shall have executed our railway to the Pacific, nothing of it will be seen at one moment and by the physical eye that differs from the rails of any other road, and the vulgar will be struck far more by a palace at Versailles, or a column of Trajan; unless, indeed, a pointing hand were hewn in granite, at San Francisco,

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with the words, To the Atlantic, and another at some Atlantic city, with the words, To the Pacific; and even then, the real grandeur of the road would not be perceived by the physical eye.' And so it is with capitals. We live in an age which has justly been called the age of large cities. Populous cities are indispensable to civilization, and even to liberty, though I own that one of our problems yet to be solved is, how to unite the highest degree of individual liberty with order, in large cities.

But absorbing cities, cities on which monarchs are allowed to lavish millions upon millions of the national money, always belong to a low state of general national life, often to effete empires. The vast cities of Asia, imperial Rome, and other cities prove it. On the other hand, it is an unfortunate state of things in which one city rules supreme, either by an overwhelming population, as Naples, or by concentration, as Paris. Constant changes of government seem almost inevitable, whether they are produced by the people, as in the case of Paris, or by foreigners, as in the case of Naples.

A comparison between Paris and London, in this respect, is instructive. London, far more populous, has far less influence than Paris; and London, incomparably richer, is far less brilliant than Paris. Monarchical absolutism and centralism strike the eye, and strive to do so. Liberty is brilliant indeed, but it is brilliant in history, and must be studied in her institutions.

Great as the influence of Paris has been ever since the reign of the Valois, it has steadily increased, and those who strove for liberty were by no means behind

1 No one will charge the author, he trusts, with political iconoclasm, that has read his chapter on Monuments in his Political Ethics.

2 The Age of Great Cities, or Modern Society viewed in its Relation to Intelligence, Morals and Religion, by Robert Vaughan, D.D. London, 1843.

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