Chapter I: Introduction: Page

I. Scope of the book--French Republicanism condemned by
Swiss and American experience--Its relations to the
French people xxiii

II. M. Gambetta's Parliamentary revolution--What Germany
owes to the French Republicans--Legislative usurpation
in France and the United States xxvi

III. The Executive in France, England, and America--Liberty
and the hereditary principle--General Grant on the
English Monarchy--Washington's place in American
history xxxvii

IV. The legend of the First Republic--A carnival of incapacity
ending in an orgie of crime--The French people never
Republican--Paris and the provinces--The Third Republic
surrendered to the Jacobins, and committed to
persecution and corruption--Estimated excess of expenditure
over income from 1879 to 1889, 7,000,000,000 francs
or 280,000,000_l._ li

V. Danton's maxim, 'To the victors belong the spoils'--Comparative
cost of the French and the British Executive
machinery--The Republican war against religion.--The
present situation as illustrated by past events lxviii

VI. Foreign misconceptions of the French people--An English
statesman's notion that there are 'five millions of
Atheists' in France--Mr. Bright and Mr. Gladstone the last
English public men who will 'cite the Christian Scriptures
as an authority'--Signor Crispi on modern constitutional
government and the French 'principles of 1789'--Napoleon
the only 'Titan of the Revolution'--The debt of
France for her modern liberty to America and to England lxxvi
VII. The Exposition of 1889 an electoral device--Panic of the
Government caused by Parisian support of General
Boulanger--Futile attempt of M. Jules Ferry to win back
Conservatives to the Republic--Narrow escape of the
Republic at the elections of 1889--Steady increase of
monarchical party since 1885---Weakness of the Republic
as compared with the Second Empire lxxxix

VIII. How the Republic maintains itself--A million of people
dependent on public employment--M. Constans 'opens
Paradise' to 13,000 Mayors--Public servants as political
agents--Open pressure on the voters--Growing strength
of the provinces.--The hereditary principle alone can now
restore the independence of the French Executive--Diplomatic
dangers of actual situation--Socialism or a
Constitutional Monarchy the only alternatives xcvi

CHAPTER I

IN THE PAS-DE-CALAIS

Calais--Natural and artificial France--The provinces and the
departments--The practical joke of the First Consulate--The
Counts of Charlemagne and the Prefects of Napoleon--President
Carnot at Calais--Politics and Socialism in Calais--Immense
outlay on the port, but works yet unfinished--Indifference
of the people--A president with a grandfather--The 'Great Carnot'
and Napoleon--The party of the 'Sick at heart'--The Louis XVI. of
the Republic--Léon Say and the 'White Mouse'--Gambetta's victory
in 1877--Political log-rolling, French and American--Republican
extravagance and the 'Woollen Stocking'--Boulanger and his
legend--Wanted a 'Great Frenchman'--The Duc d'Aumale
and the Comte de Paris--The Republican law of exile--The
French people not Republican--The Legitimists and the farmers--A
French journalist explains the Presidential progress--Why
decorations are given 1-22