It Should Qualify The Contempt Which Some Americans
Express Of The French Republic, That When The Subject Of The Slave
Colonies Was Brought Up, And It Was Seen That Consistency Demanded
Immediate Emancipation, They Immediately Emancipated; And Not Only So,
But Conferred At Once On The Slaves The Elective Franchise.
This point strongly illustrates the difference, in one respect,
between the French and the Anglo-Saxons.
As a race the French are less
commercial, more ideal, more capable of devotion to abstract
principles, and of following them out consistently, irrespective of
expediency.
There is one thing which cannot but make one indignant here in Paris,
and which, I think, is keenly felt by some of the best among the
French; and that is, the indifference of many Americans, while here,
to their own national principles of liberty. They seem to come to
Paris merely to be hangers on and applauders in the train of that
tyrant who has overthrown the hopes of France. To all that cruelty and
injustice by which thousands of hearts are now bleeding, they appear
entirely insensible. They speak with heartless levity of the
revolutions of France, as of a pantomime got up for their diversion.
Their time and thoughts seem to be divided between defences of
American slavery and efforts to attach themselves to the skirts of
French tyranny. They are the parasites of parasites - delighted if they
can but get to an imperial ball, and beside themselves if they can
secure an introduction to the man who figured as a _roue_, in the
streets of New York. Noble-minded men of all parties here, who have
sacrificed all for principle, listen with suppressed indignation,
while young America, fresh from the theatres and gambling saloons,
declares, between the whiffs of his cigar, that the French are not
capable of free institutions, and that the government of Louis
Napoleon is the best thing France could have. Thus from the plague-
spot at her heart has America become the propagandist of despotism in
Europe. Nothing weighs so fearfully against the cause of the people of
Europe as this kind of American influence. Through almost every city
of Europe are men whose great glory it appears to be to proclaim that
they worship the beast, and wear his name in their foreheads. I have
seen sometimes, in the forests, a vigorous young sapling which had
sprung up from the roots of an old, decaying tree. So, unless the
course of things alters much in America, a purer civil liberty will
spring up from her roots in Europe, while her national tree is blasted
with despotism. It is most affecting, in moving through French
circles, to see what sadness, what anguish of heart, lies under that
surface which seems to a stranger so gay. Each revolution has cut its
way through thousands of families, ruining fortunes, severing domestic
ties, inflicting wounds that bleed, and will bleed for years. I once
alluded rather gayly to the numerous upsets of the French government,
in conversation with a lady, and she laughed at first, but in a moment
her eyes filled with tears, and she said, "Ah, you have no idea what
these things are among us." In conversation nothing was more common
than the remark, "I shall do so and so, provided things hold out; but
then there is no telling what will come next."
On the minds of some there lie deep dejection and discouragement.
Some, surrounded by their growing families, though they abhor the
tyranny of the government, acquiesce wearily, and even dread change
lest something worse should arise.
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