Ir any one had prophesied when the present French Republic was proclaimed on the 4th of September, 1870, that it would attain full age uninterrupted by disorganization or revolution, he would have been laughed at as a dreamer of dreams; and yet in less than two mouths the Republic will be twenty-one. years uié anniversary of the destruction of the Bastille for the national fete day, the French Republic took the grander day, because the effects of that destruction were felt by the whole of the civilised world, while the substitution of the Republic for the Empire was a wore distinctly national matter. hose who turn aside for a moment on this Fourteenth of July to consider what the condition of France was on the first fourteenth of July under this Republic, twenty years ago, and contrast it with the present condition of the country, will allow that every eulogistic word that is uttered to-day wherever Frenchmen congregate all over the world is justified." Thiers adopted the Republic because, he said, it divided Frenchmen east; but it has done more than that it has had a positive as well as a negative: value: it has united then most.
No other French government: since the Revolution, has lasted twenty-one years as this Republic has now almost done. Other forms of government have started amid general enthusiasm and have gradually alienated their friends and seen their enemies increased, until they have perished under a combination of their foes. There was no! enthu siasm, except perhaps among a smal knot of TRaticlls rH Paris, over the foundation of the present Republic; it was started and supported us a last resource, Royalists, Imperialists, and Communists proposing to allow it to exist on sufferance for a little while, and to mature for a while under its shade their plans to destroy it and seize the power themselves. It has seen all its enemies collapse. The Royalist conspiracy was indeed formidable at one moment, and if the Comte de Chambord had been more manageable he anight have sat. for: a year or two on the throne of his fathers. He is-dead, the Napoleons are dead, the most congenital
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.