Founding a so-called Constitutional Monarchy upon a corruption as gross as that of Walpole, Louis Phillippe had rendered his power absolute at the price of sapping its foundation; and Tocqueville had predicted the Revolution long before accident precipitated it--predicted it as an inevitable result of the corruption he denounced, and indicated the forces of silent discontent which were sure to overthrow it. In 1848, and still more in 1871, the people of France at large turned instinctively to those natural leaders whom at all other times they had so persistently ostracized. Alarmed in the first case by an unexpected and undesired triumph of the Parisian populace--in the second, chastened by a great national disaster, without definite views or objects of their own--they deliberately trusted their interests to the larger landowners, whose interests must coincide with theirs; to the men of hereditary culture, of thoughtful habits, and wider experience, in whom they recognized a natural capacity to deal with problems that bewildered themselves, with events that had taken them utterly unawares. But, save at such times, and under the sobering influence of such lessons, equality, and not liberty, is the root of French Democracy. To equality, liberty is readily and unhesitatingly sacrificed.
_'"Égalité,"_ said Tocqueville, "is an expression of envy. It means in the real heart of every Republican, 'No one shall be better off than I am;' and while this is preferred to good government, good government is impossible. In fact, no party desires good government. The first object of the reactionary party is to keep down the Republicans; the second, if it be the second, object of each branch of that party, is to keep down the two others. The object of the Republicans is, as they admit, _égalité_--but as for liberty, or security, or education, or the other ends of government, no one cares for them."'
