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chartered provisions ? All this is a sad and mysterious enigma , which , however , the consideration of a few facts will solve * There exist with us three principal features of our manners and internal state ; there prevail in France among the active and enlightened part of the nation , a military spirit , a democratic spirit , and a commercial spirit . Our military taste is a relict of
the wars of the revolution , and a living branch of the laurels of Napoleon . Blows and fighting are a favourite divertissement with the French people . Fighting , purely in the abstract sense , will always be popular in France , and this We call glory ; and such is our love for parading in arms , that here , by some at least , no king that fights well will be called despot . This explains what has happened in July 1830 , and in the beginning of this month , —
that a rumour in Paris is ever apt to degenerate into a pitched battle ; and that , as I am certain it has happened nineteen days ago , people go to blows with immense delight , and not only young men and rabble , but respectable tradesmen , persons of all professions , and even fathers of large families . Such is with us the intoxicating influence of gunpowder ; and there is no doubt , that if we end in having a war with any power , either king or
autocrat , that the French will go to work with a violence that European tyrants had better avoid I—Our democratical spirit is equally a fact , and is owing to many causes . The principal is the active and eternal souvenir of the French revolution . Liberty , fraternity , equality , are magic sounds that no tempest can drown in the ears of an active and enlightened people . I do not mean to say that our ideas of liberty are very sound and rational ; but
our ideas of equality are very deeply fixed . We detest domination , either princely , feudal , or ecclesiastic . The absolutism of our Catholic clergy is a prominent cause of the disgust which they excite . The power of a free press in the latter years of Charles X . ' s reign did much for the education of the minds of the people . In this country , when a man or a boy above childhood knows how to read , his first book is our newspapers , which
provide an every-day food . In this manner many people in France discuss , argue , and decide in political questions of the greatest import , without having the firm and standing principles of a sound and philosophical education . This is so much the case , that our press , though small compared to your own and to America , has devoured almost all the other modes of publication . In France , there is now nearly no literature at all , but the periodical .
In this lies one cause of our democratical spirit , and of our political ardour , which , however , is rather superficial in many cases . Another cause is a tendency towards a general emancipation of the provinces from the administrative despotism of Paris . Every large town in France , nay , every village will have politicians of its own , and our Parisian dignitaries were much amazed in the course of last year , to see in all parts of France good and well
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On the Public Mind of France . 493
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1832, page 493, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1816/page/61/
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