On this page
- Departments (1)
-
Text (3)
-
(132)
-
XX.—NOTICES OF BOOKS.
-
. -***- 1848. Historical Revelations. Lo...
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
(132)
( 132 )
Xx.—Notices Of Books.
XX . —NOTICES OF BOOKS .
. -***- 1848. Historical Revelations. Lo...
. - _*** - 1848 . Historical Revelations . Louis Blanc . Chapman & Hall , London ,
The Revolution of 1848 , witli its astounding' results , chronicled and discussed as it has been , still remains a mystery to the great bulk of
EngHshmen . That a nation should rise and depose a King to bow its neck to an Emperor , should shed its blood in the sacred name
of liberty , to bind up its -wounds and sit quietly by while liberty herself is strangled and stifled , and this not in the first moments of
Surprise , but patiently year affcer year , is a spectacle so foreign to the sturdy common sense and _straight forward comprehension of
simple-minded John Bull , that , as we have said , though written about and talked about more or less eloquently ever since , Englishmen still
shrug their shoulders and confess their inability to understand or / sympathise with a people so easily excited and depressed .
M . Louis Blanc ' s book throws some light upon the subject . It gives , not the picture of a nation , as we English are apt to suppose , rising
en masse in assertion of some fundamental principle , as did England led by Oliver Cromwell , but of metropolitan sections , divided among
themselves in the very hour of success , each choosing its own leader , adhering to its own theory of progression , and fighting obstinately for
its own particular ideas of liberty and right , blind to or in defiance of the peril to national liberty and progression .
M . Louis Blanc is himself an honest and a sincere man , an advanced thinkerand devotedly attached to republican institutions
, as the only form of government suitable to the peculiarities of the French people .
Pie sets out by declaring , that the prestige of kingship has been destroyed by successive revolutions ; that since 1789 , monarchy in
France has become incompatible with the natural growth of the princiles then proclaimed ; that a King in France now would be as
great p an anomaly as a protestant made Pope ; and furthermore , that the sense of equality was in 1848 , developed to the utmost .
24 " th " Consequentl of February y , when assumed the tlie members responsibility of tike _IBrovisional of a change of Government government , on , they the ulse of nile nthusiasmbut _from mature and
practical did not act consideration under the imp of the wants a juve and e the tendencies , of French a society : been and the proclaimed best proof than that it they was universall were right y is and tliat spontaneousl the Republic y acknowledged had no sooner . "
In other words , Paris being understood as France , whatever Paris decreedthe Provinces , wherein confessedly the republican party was
, numerically in the minority , could not do other than accept . But , though towards the end of February the Republic was " universally
and spontaneously acknowledged _/ ' the events of the succeeding six
-
-
Citation
-
English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Oct. 1, 1858, page 132, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01101858/page/60/
-