François Guizot

All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exercise this spectre.

Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French radicals and German police spies.

Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not held back the branding reproach of communism against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries? Two things result from this fact.

First, communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be itself a power.

Philippe is a member of that sad fraternity of men whose fathers had been guillotined during the French Revolution.

Other prominent politicians like Francois Guizot, the Duke de Broglie, other people like that had also had their own fathers killed.

And for a lot of these people, this was a traumatic experience that seemed to stir a conservatism, a desire to avoid seeing anything like the revolution or at least the terror happen again.

And we know that Louis Philippe was haunted by the revolution, was trying to avoid recreating anything like this, though he was definitely liberal, liberal minded, opposed to the ultra royalist faction, wanted to see France steer in a more liberal direction.

"The tension between liberalism and its successor ideology, and between the social classes embodying those ideas, provides a, a recurrent theme in 19th century political debate.

François Guizot, 1787 to 17... uh, 1874, the Huguenot prime minister under France's liberal July monarchy and a distinguished historian of England, considered democracy to be as much of a curse as mon- as monarchical absolutism.

As French prime minister in the 1840s, Guizot fought doggedly against the extension of the limited franchise, the cens." From property taxpayers to other French citizens

Yeah, I mean, that, I mean, that right there is, uh, important too.

Like when we think of democracy, and, and I know it's kind of an overrated point, a lot of people make fun of, you know, people distinguishing an American, you know, uh, government between like republic and, and, and, uh, you know, democracy and stuff, and sometimes that, that is like overstated.

Wow.

He distinguished sharply in his speeches and political tracts between those civil rights suitable for all citizens, such as freedom of worship and the vote.

By means of the second, Guizot maintained the lower class could destabilize society, radically redistri- redistribute- redistributing, redistributing po- property and bringing resourceful demagogues to power.

A spectre is haunting Europe, the spectre of communism.

All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals, and German police spies.

Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of communism against the more advanced opposition parties as well as against its reactionary adversaries? Two things result from this fact.

First, communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be itself a power.

London is but the focus.

"A municipality like Rome," says Guizot, "has been able to conquer the world, but it was not so easy a task to govern and organize it.

Thus, when the work seemed consummated, when all the West and a great part of the East had fallen under the Roman sway, we find this prodigious accumulation of cities, of small states, instituted for isolation and independence, disunited, detached from each other, and slipping the noose, as it were, in all directions.

This was one of the causes which led to the necessity of an empire." Under Augustus, Rome lost its republican character and became an imperial city.

Groups of serfs who tilled the neighboring fields, and some few artisans who manufactured necessary articles for the household, gathered round the baronial abode, and formed a little village, out of which, in process of time, there arose a town of some importance.

In a similar way, villages sprang up in the vicinity of convents.

And no doubt, as Guizot has remarked, the progress of towns was considerably promoted by the right of sanctuary in churches.

Even before the boroughs were constituted, and before their force and ramparts enabled them to hold out an asylum to the wretched population of the fields, the protection which could be found in the church alone was sufficient to attract a great many fugitives into the towns.

All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exercise this specter.

Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French radicals and German police spies.

Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of communism against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?" End quote.

The existence of a class war is nothing new.

At the Duchesse d'Abrons receptions he met the relics of all the governments.

He only spoke on one occasion to Guizot.

The minister seems to have received him coldly.

He remarked that with these great people you must be a person of importance to make any way.

Europe was threatened with universal revolution.

Only large and courageous reforms could stem the tide.

M. Guizot might have saved the throne of Louis Philippe had he yielded to the demand for electoral reform.

Why had there been no revolution in England? Because the Duke of Wellington in 1829, Lord Grey in 1832, and Sir Robert Peel in 1846 understood the exigencies of their epoch, proving themselves thereby to be the first statesmen of the time.