M. Thiers' posthumous address to the electors of the Ninth
Arrondissment of Paris was published on Monday, and its cir- culation, of course, promptly prohibited by the Government, who have not the least intention of allowing fair-play at the elections, if anything they can do can prevent it. The address is, on the whole, an extremely able document, the drift of which is to show that the late Chamber was very far indeed from " Radical " in its positive legislation ; that it was not dissolved for anything subversive in its political votes, but for the steady-going Republicanism of its policy ; that the Monarchists, who can agree on nothing else, agree in desiring to put every impediment they can in the way of the Republic ; and that the Government do not even limit them- selves to plotting against the Republic, since they ignore Com- pletely all the best-recognised liberties of even Constitutional monarchies. The only watery bit of the address was in the concluding portion, which M. Thiers had not revised, and, in which he goes into what we may call the idolatry of the nine- teenth century. When a man begins to talk about the Zeitgeist, or the nineteenth century, as if it were a kind of god, we always begin to suspect that he does not know what he means. The Zeitgeist—even the Zeitgeist of the nineteenth century—has very false and weak elements in it, as well as strong and true, and the wise man trill smite heavily the weak and false elements in that Zeitgeist, while he allies himself with that in it which is strong and true.
