THE NAPOLEONIC IDEA AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.
For several weeks past, we have heard much of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte.[17] Nothing less than his mournful physical death, on the 9th of January, 1873, was needed to draw him from the oblivion to which Italian liberals consigned him after his political death of September 2, 1870. It would seem that from the imperial grave opened at Chiselhurst went forth a bitter reproach against the unexampled ingratitude of those who saw the tombstone of Sedan close over his empire with mute impassibility and secret joy. Now to the cowardly silence of two years succeeds an uproar of elegies and praises. Remorse for having left the conqueror of Solferino in the mire of the Meuse is lulled to sleep by the wailing of hired mourners; as if the shame of basely forsaking him could be masked behind a block of unblushing marble.
No man was ever more fatal to himself than Napoleon III. All which was his by usurpation or right turned against him in the end. His worst humiliations were the work of his own hands. He destroyed himself, and the words of the Christian Demosthenes were truer of him than of others: _Nemo nisi a se ipso læditur_.
Now, by a final mockery of fortune, he is punished after death by having bier and tomb dishonored with the apotheosis of the Italian party who laud to the skies the weapon that worked his ruin--the ruling idea of his reign.
This idea, which necessarily failed because it was impracticable, and in its failure reduced him to nothing, is his sole title to compassion or glory in the opinion of this faction. But as the cruel irony contains a historical lesson, useful for the present and the future, we will study it by the light of facts, incontestable except to the blind.
Such were the contradictions, perplexities, and duplicity of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte upon the throne, that he was often believed to be a prince reigning at hap-hazard. Indeed, it is said, now that he has left the earth, that the history of his incomprehensible reign will be the most difficult work ever undertaken. This seems to us a mistake, if a distinction be made between the man and the prince, his life and his reign. The man and his life will always seem inextricable, for he used all means that suited his convenience, and in their choice gave preference to no moral rule or principle of honesty; following openly or hiddenly the mutable interest of each day. But the prince and his reign, in spite of apparent contradictions, are easily understood by the simple study of the political end which he invariably proposed to himself.