Monarchies and Republics [pp. 146-156]

MONARCHIES AND REPUBLICS.
and the influx of industrious, intelligent and well-intending
foreigners large, the Republic of the United States of America
had a short dream of unexampled prosperity. The first in
wealth and sources of wealth, inaccessible to any foreign enemy,
she carries the seeds of destruction within her own bosom, and
the day is lot far distant, when history will count her with the
things of the past. For freedom is based upon public virtue and
integrity, and that having fallen a prey to boundless ambition
and reckless corruption, where is the controlling principle? Does
not the present contest for supremacy in Congress and administration prove that the people of the United States, despite their
more general information, are as easily led as any other in the
universe? Do not unscrupulous politicians deceive millions by
words whose substance they have not at heart, and do not'millions eargerly snap at the bait? Is not the public money squanlered, and fraud and defalcation a by-word of praise? Is not
one party actually, coolly and knowingly planning the extermination of the other, for the satisfaction of their unlimited ambition, and do we not stand to-day at the very brink of another
wvar, more bloody, more cruel and more unrelenting than the first?
Has not the very pulpit, the nurse of love and forgiveness, become
a tool of political intolerance and persecution, in fine, a blasphemy and a mockery? And is not the poor, ignorant, brutish
black race made a pretext and a wedge of destruction in the
hands of those who place their own wicked, selfish purposes far
above the lives of hundreds ofthousands of their fellow-citizens'?
If that be republicanism, give me the "Monarchy by the grace
of God!"
Let us look, therefore, a little closer at the bugbear of mon
.rchy. England, we have seen, has contrived to engraft upon
its privileges a great many democratic restrictions. There is an
aristocracy in England, both of birth and of wealth-the latter
is the more intolerable of the two, and found everywhere; the
former exercises a great deal of undue influence, and sometimes
in a very brutal manner, but there is a determinate resistance to
it, and England is slowly but steadily progressing France, in
the firm hand of the greatest statesman of modern times, is enjoying an era of commercial prosperity, national wealth and respect abroad, such as she has not seen this many a day. And
who is prepared to say, that the light-hearted, light-headed, lightfooted and quick-tempered Frenchman does not need an iron
hand to rule his destiny? And glorious old Italy, with her ruins
of ancient greatness, her smiling skies, her bountiful soil and her
lazy people, would at this day be a hell upon earth, if the Republican Mlazzini and the blundering old warrior Garibaldi had
undertaken the task to carry her through shoals and reefs into
the harbor, instead of Re Galantuomno and large-minded Cavour.
For, there were a stupid, bigoted, fanatic priesthood, and a numberless, gambling, aimless nobility ready to distract the people,
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