THE NEW RIGHT DIVINE.
Lours NAPOLEON is the true political philosopher : other men have established dogmas, he finds a use for them • other factions generally uphold incompatible dogmas, he reconciles them. He waives for the present being called "Emperor," but he proclaims himself "heir of the Empire "; or rather, he makes an oral de- claratory decree that he was so proclaimed before his birth. "In 1804,' he says, "four millions of suffrages, by proclaiming heredi- tary power in my family, designated me as the heir of the Empire' He is the Prince President heir presumptive and predestined of the Napoleonic dynasty.
More than that, he claims the sanotion of Legitimacy: "Since the principle of Divine Right has been replaced by the principle of the Sovereignty of the People, it may be said that no government has been so legitimate as mine." Here we see him combining the idol of the Tory Absolutist with the idol of the Radical Revolutionist—the "Divine Right" of the Pitt Club with the "Sovereignty of the People of the Correspond- ing Society. But he knows, as well as any savage does, how to treat his icloL As King Mumbo-jumbo would beat his fetish, so Louis Napoleon thrashes his Sovereign People into a propitious mood. The vox populi which confers his right divine is a cry wrung from a trampled race.
His Sovereign People, a transcendent specimen of the "free and independent electors," sends up, at his bidding, a Legislative Corps; discovers and he dvers the true end of representative taxation. By a decree, he had already given to the nation all the revenue that was needed for the nation ; but Louis Napoleon, with scrupulous deli- cacy, does not like to do anything for himself; and so the Legisla- tive Corps at once begins its career of taxing the nation for him and his household. It is quid pro quo : he gives an endowment of revenue to the nation, the nation provides for his household. If both supplies come out of the pockets of the nation, the case is not without precedent : when traveller and landlord sit down to a social glass, the traveller pays for both. The representative sys- tem has been brought, even in England, to be almost purely a taxing-machine, but it is Louis Napoleon who has brought that machine to its perfection.
Lastly, he has brought to absolute perfection the great art of modern statesmanship ; which is, to use up a popular dogma for your own benefit. He has reconciled agitation with "order," re- presentative taxation with absolute authority, modern escroquerie with mediceval adventure, the election " cry " with the cry of sub- jugation under sworded tyranny.
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