Lucien Edward Henry

“ It is not in the interests of a dull and uncertain Republic that people may think it necessary to write; Europe cannot help seeing, and is not surprised to see, the impotent inaction of France on the field of Foreign Politics. Republics are doomed in Monarchical Europe before they are hatched, and they cannot escape their unavoidable fate; and the Third Republic of French Democrats, still lingering in 1882, is, on the one hand, kept alive by the mutual distrust, the deep internal divisions and secret rancour of Republicans, hating each other more than they love France. ”

“ We alone are in a position to assume a bellicose policy: amongst the nations of Europe France is the one least inclined for adventure, and yet she is the one who could go forth to meet it most readily and with fewest drawbacks. Tight-waisted Germany sounds hollow beneath her martial tunic; the measured tread of Russia reveals the void created by the miner's craft; well set up and well ballasted, the little French soldier stands ready to meet the first shock. ”

“ Of all the Statesmen who have governed Europe during this century,—Ave may say,—M. Thiers was the only one who had taken accurate note of the past, the only one who had learned the lessons inculcated by Providence and who had deserved by making an open confession of his political mistakes that the spirit of God and France should speak by his mouth. In his defence of the Holy See in the French Senate he said: "There is a thing more worthy of respect than glory, genius, virtue; it is justice." ”

“ Let us hope only that France may yet have the power to raise herself from the shameful entanglements, at home and abroad, into which she is forced daily by her weak and incapable Government in the present. All non-excitable and non-sensitive Frenchmen of influence in good society should give up all fine declamations, and set to the more reasonable duty of teaching their prejudiced (because ignorant) and thoughtless countrymen, the duty of refuting and dissipating the untrue, insulting, and outrageous teaching spread in the crowd by unfair, impudent and unpatriotic writers. ”

“ Current History shows eloquently enough, that since the Monarchical principle has been violated in France, all other thrones have been trembling; the European balance is destroyed, lesser States vanish one after the other, power falls into the cleverest hands, rights are trodden underfoot by brutal violence, the scales of justice are replaced by the soldier's sword, the majesty of Royalty seems tarnished throughout the world. When France rises from her degradation and the Revolution in Europe is slain, then only European princes will resume their stability, and thrones regain their lustre. ”

“ The overwhelming responsibility of the future must be borne by the rising generation; this is a fact often insisted upon by our elders. The organs of lying and injustice are bold enough in their attacks: surely the least that can be required of our young champions, is that we should courageously stand to our convictions, to our deeds, to our loyalty in all that concerns our God, our Sovereign, our country that we should bow down in a true, practical and united homage before benefits conferred and rights acquired, before our Sovereign and Constitution ”

“ LEGITIMACY, OR RIGHT.
"Legitimacy," wrote the eminent French statesman Royer Collard, "is the grandest and most fruitful idea ever conceived by modern nations. It is a living representative of individual right, the noble inheritance of humanity, of which, if we are once deprived, nothing more remains to us on earth. Legitimacy belongs to us more than to any other nation, because no other Royal Family possesses it as wholly and as fully as the Royal Family of France does." ”

“ His mother, gentle and pious-hearted—nay, are the Royal Princesses of France known to have proved ever otherwise?—had ever watched over him in all outward changes, assiduously keeping human pieties and good affections alive in her Royal son. Our words doubtless may sound harsh to the ears of men whose motto is: virtus post nuimnos! However, truth ever finds a high-born heart ready to stand by champions of religion and patriotism. ”

“ Caught in the midst of prosperity undreamed of, the Napoleonic Dynasty fell of its own accord into an abyss of blood and shame, dragging France down with it. That wonderful military star which arose at Areola and Rivoli and shone on the fields of Marengo and Austerlitz to set at Sedan; that great nation, as the French dearly loved to be called, defeated, disgraced, disarmed in six months; that French army, oft victorious, even when hampered by the carelessness and incapacity of its Officers ”

“ King and people perished on the scaffold, and with them perished the old French liberty. A corrupt society gave birth to Voltaire and the false Philosophers. This liberty, a daughter of heaven, the watchful guardian of the nation's Covenant, should not be forsaken and allowed to be swept away in the whirlwind of French Revolutions. Some day she will arise and, though not in our lifetime perhaps, save France, disgraced by the memorable Revolution, which began on July 14th, 1789, that day when the πρώτος ψεύδος of the nineteenth century was uttered. ”

“ We do not belong, it is true, to the schools of Politics or Diplomacy, to that privileged class of men who are vowed to the study of international evils and of the means to combat them. To a certain extent, therefore, it is a bold act on our part to dare set before the eyes of men of practical experience an Essay which cannot but betray a lack of science, as well as of the requisite capacity for treating of so delicate a subject as the history of the completely legitimate, though shamefully usurped, rights of the Royal Family of a foreign country. ”

“ For this same guilt Royalty became the plaything, an object of contempt and distrust, the tool of the vile populace in France; for the guilt of their forefathers the Princes and Princesses of the Royal House of France have had to fly for their lives and to thank the foreigner for a shelter, nay, some for a tomb! It is God's will. God curses in this present world human institutions as well as human creatures when by Him they are found undutiful: the next world in truth is one of punishment or rewards for individuals. ”

“ These Deputies and these Peers were pre-eminently Frenchmen; in short, at that date, from the Throne to the cottage, France was herself and ruled herself At that date the adherents of the Monarchy were sets of unpaid unshaken, unseduced, unterrified men; to-day the followers of Democracy are servile majorities, ready to silence the minorities who denounce corruption, and dare enter a last and fearless protest. Reasoning that fails for the moment will tell, we trust, in the long run, because no living power has yet finally survived an honest cause undeservedly defeated. ”

“ He who is conscious of having deserved well of his country and knows that he can still serve it; he who is not sated by an ephemeral celebrity and who despises the fame of a day for the sake of true glory; he who wishes to speak the truth and to work for the welfare of the State, irrespective of fickle public opinion; such a man bears within himself the reward of his deeds, the charm of his sufferings, the price of his dangers. ”

“ Hereditary right and legitimacy must exist everywhere, that society may be permanent and authority duly exercised. The heredity of thrones has no other aim than to place right on the throne, that so it may exist everywhere. A legitimate King cannot be made, any more than can a free people. The idea and the feeling of right, which is the true principle of the institution in both cases, and is its motive power, cannot permeate it throughout in a day. All things in their origin are the product of violence, and violence distorts them even whilst creating them. ”

“ It is time that in France, as in Ireland, as in every European country, a vigorous reaction should assert itself against the Jacobins, whether national or international, who would rule the world by terror, against the spirit of disorder which overwhelms modern society, against the general moral enfeeblement of characters who have lost their power of resistance. ”

“ What would become of the world and of its inhabitants if Religion, with its sweet consolations, its excellent promises, the inestimable compensations it offers to the wretched, did not soothe the inevitable woes which oppress each individual and especially the wealthy! It is in the inequality of States, the uncertain portioning of honour and reward, that Religion reveals the charm of its empire and the wisdom of its laws, that temper and compensate as much as possible for human sorrows. Religion alone can transform suffering ”

“ If at times it seems difficult to make them agree, the fault lies, not with French Catholics, but with those designing sectarians who assail the most sacred rights of conscience in striving to destroy the faith and convictions which form the happiness and dignity of man; who dishonour France and lead her to certain destruction by handing her over to every passion and licence; mischievous, selfish, and costly ribalds, who really detest moral and good government and good people, because these will not shelter Socialists, Anarchists, and incendiaries. ”

“ Have they been and are they the government that Europe likes? All of them put together, let them throw their claims into the scales and let truth and justice weigh them!
The diseases of the human mind are sometimes so intense that the most skilful physician has to compound with them; and when it is clearly evident that the impulse is irresistible, the only thing that can be done is to become its leader; because it has been truly said that nations do not reason, but they feel. The French more than any other nation is governed by a spirit of contradiction ”

“ We are writing from both past and present History, and our fervent hope is, that this our present work may prove a timely warning against any ignorant, misunderstood, or distorted reading of the History of France, especially for the last thirty-five years. We do not profess to judge; we are studying the History of France, which we are bidden to teach the young entrusted to our care. We will not substitute our own views: we simply take to and shape our task according to the safe control of French tradition and the realities of French life. ”

“ The Revolution of 1688 in England misled King Louis Philippe and later on Louis Bonaparte. Nevertheless there is not the slightest analogy between the Constitutions of the two countries, and still less between the temper of the two people. Would to God that the Political Economy of England was that of France! For no one wishes more than we do, to see in France that fusion of Princes and principle; to see the two Houses of Peers and Commoners striving only for the prosperity of France ”

“ Heaven alone can restore a country to the esteem of nations in preference to their mistrust; good example from the upper classes will restore the whole country to self-respect. For, while the wretches, the hypocrites, and the foolish, already cry out for more revenge and thirst for civil war, those who believe in God and in France confess with grief that they have been justly smitten for their outrageous pride, apostasy, and rebellion. Every man should remember his forefathers, and so should the nation. ”

“ Who is there who, being thoroughly acquainted with our neighbouring friends over the Channel, will deny that, both at home and abroad, France will prove happier under less visionary theorists and less furious patriots? More hopefulness and quietude, at all events, more religion and morality therefrom, more oneness in feeling and interest between French people decidedly would grow speedily in the place of sensitive and selfish Babelites who grow nothing else but social disaffection and political Revolution. ”

“ The Constitution of a country has inevitably and irresistibly a powerful influence over the composition of its personal and legislative government, and consequently over the direction of public business.
Under the old system, at the dawn of Royalty, when the feudal Nobility were honest but mostly ignorant, clerics, priests, and bishops especially, ruled, not by might or right,—neither of which they owned,—but by their influence; and that influence they owed to their mental superiority, to the culture of their minds, in a word, to their education. Their power was a legitimate one ”

“ The Orleans Princes, in spite of the lustre of a numerous family, have eaten the bread of exile on the English soil; Holyrood, Claremont and Twickenham are familiar names to contemporary Frenchmen. Let the Royal Princes not give ear to flatterers; the safety of France and the future of their dynasty lie in a sublime act of political charity, in placing duty above every human consideration. ”

“ This cavilling style of speech shows no knowledge of the History of the country, no humour, no high education. And the generous feelings of Englishmen, their good sense and affectionate reverence for Royalty, demand that, before giving his verdict against any man and any body of men, a judge should be known to all of us as a man of a pure patriotism and above all reproach in his own life, a pattern of every manly virtue, able to enforce the virtues, or, at the very least, the semblance of the virtues, a large portion of which he expects elevated men as the humble ones to possess. ”

“ France was in her death-throes not long ago, and she is threatened with more troubles. She must be saved.
This safety,—the safety of all, the safety of Princes as well as ours,—they, the Orléans Princes, hold in their hands. Let them listen to the voice of Providence, to the voice of their country, to the voice of their father. Providence speaks to them by the woes and sorrows of their agonizing country; from the wreck of the Throne which God cast down at a sign. He tells them that pride is an affront to His Divinity ”

“ Considering what France was under her Kings, what she now is, and how many troubles she has had to endure at the hands of intriguers, the conclusion in its substance, in its nudity, in its complete entirety, accepted by all men able to read French History, is surely that France always was, is at heart, and should remain what Great Britain is, and rightly wishes to remain, i.e., a Constitutional Monarchy. ”

“ A fair field given them and yet unwon, a continuous waste of time and public money, and disquieting signs of the times, with a pregnant significance of their own, only show for the third time—no fair-minded observer is ignorant of this curious phenomenon—that French Republicans naturally and inevitably lead their country to the ever same end: breaking the heart and sucking the brains of France, and unsettling the peaceful relations of European Powers. ”

“ One understands human frailty; one pities any fallen man; but one wonders at the double baseness of a man who betrays both his political and literary colours, drawing upon himself contempt and rejection from his countrymen. Most Frenchmen, indeed, are good citizens and pious Christian people, and possess national pride and self-respect enough to judge their masters from the higher stand-point of truth and morality as much as of loyalty and honesty. ”

“ Unless deliberately ignoring the History of France before 1792, surely no one will contend that a King on the Throne of France will prove a step in advance from complexity to simplicity in settling the internal and foreign difficulties of Europe, unable as we are, to do without France. As to political farceurs, suspicious minds and interested partisans of the Imperial or Republican confraternities, we do not expect to see them accept our views. Calamities never teach wisdom to fools. ”

“ God has stamped this long race of the Kings of France with His own seal. Let anarchy and intrigue work their will Yes; we can understand that certain men think twice before throwing aside the tool of Democracy; but the friends of liberty, we would even say true Republicans, dread the mob, that vile mob, the ruin of all Governments. ... This wretched mob has betrayed to every tyrant the liberty of every Government. It was the mob who betrayed the liberty of Rome, for bread and games, into the power of Cæsar. ”