' The Revolution also ignored the divine idea,
and failed. The subsequent revolutions, and especially that of 1848,
were no wiser. The last was simply the triumph of democratic absolutism
by universal suffrage, in place of autocratic or monarchic absolutism,
as De Tocqueville clearly demonstrated in his 'Ancient Regime and the
Revolution.' De Tocqueville had thoroughly mastered the constitutional
system, as had also Lacordaire and Montalembert, and he, as well as
they, joined the so-called republican movement of 1848, hoping that
constitutionalism would triumph at last. But he soon saw that European
Democrats or Red Republicans did not comprehend the idea;--that, in
fact, they meant absolutism, though democratic; and he retired in
disappointment, though calm hopefulness, to his estate, and there wrote
his 'Ancient Regime.'
True, the Red Republicans issued high-sounding phrases about liberty,
rights of man, and the right of the people to govern. But they meant
rights of man independent of God, and the right of the people to be
absolute; and they continued the system of centralism, or government by
bureaucracy, without God. The French have learned by sad experience that
there is a thousand times more danger of change, turbulence, and
disruption, under democratic absolutism than under autocratic
absolutism. Louis Napoleon knows it well, and hence his significant
phrase, 'The empire is peace.
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