Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/346

30 i ORIGIN OF THE WAR OF 1653 chat, mended and warranted by the authority of Mon* " sieur de Morny. Tho gifted Montalembert him- self was so effectually caught in this springe that he publicly represented the dilemma as giving nc choice except between Louis Bonaparte and ' the ' ruin of France.' In tho provinces, as in Faris, there were men whose love of right was stronger than their fears of the Executive Government, and stronger than their dread of the Socialists ; but the Departments, being kept in utter darkness by the arrangements of the Home Office, were slower than Paris in finding out that the blow of the 2d of December had been struck by a small knot of associates without the concurrence of statesmen who were the friends of law and order; and it would seem that, although the proclamations were received at first with stupor and perplexity, they soon engendered a hope that the President (acting, as the country people imagined him to be, with the support of many eminent statesmen) might effect a wholesome change in the Constitu- tion, and restore to France some of the tranquil- lity and freedom which she had enjoyed under the Government of her last King. There were risings ; but every Department which seemed likely to move was put under martial law. Then followed slaughter, banishment, imprisonment, sequestration ; and all this at the mere pleasure of generals raging with a cruel hatred of the people, and glowing with the glow of that motive — so hateful because so sordid — which in central- ised States men call 'zeal.' Of these generals