XXXIII. 1837. now extended to France; bankruptcies were frequent CHAP. among the trading classes, and the operatives in the great towns were at the lowest point of depression. In a single week, in the city of Paris, the cash drawn out of the savings banks amounted to the enormous sum of 1,766,000 francs (£70,000)! Facts of this kind demonstrate at once the existence of some great evils in society, and the precarious foundation on which, in spite of its apparent security, the Government in reality rested as the chinks on the surface of a volcano sometimes give the trembling passenger a glimpse into the furnace which is glowing beneath his v. 207, 208. feet.1 1 L. Blanc, of the These sufferings, however, were chiefly felt among the 92. working class, to whom the suffrage did not extend; and Dissolution Count Molé, feeling the extreme difficulty of carrying Chamber. on the Government with so very slender a majority as he could at present command, determined on a dissolution. The moment appeared favourable to such a measure. The present Chamber had sat only two years; but the aspect of public affairs, and public opinion itself, had materially changed during that period. The great contest with the Republicans, for the present at least, was over; the secret societies, though still existing, were intimidated; the amnesty had diffused universal satisfaction; the temper of the National Guard was excellent; and the fêtes on occasion of the marriage of the Duke of Orléans had both diffused general pleasure, and, by the expenditure among the different orders they had occasioned, had materially alleviated the distress of the working classes. The King entered into these views, and soon after the prorogation of the Chamber, it was dissolved by proclamation. The result, though it somewhat ameliorated the condition of the Minister, was far from giving him a fair working majority it amounted only to fifteen votes.2 This number, in the divided state of the v. 302, 309. Chamber, was so small that it could not be relied on in 2 Cap. ix. 338, 339; L. Blanc, CHAP. any serious crisis, and left the Government of France in XXXIII. the same pitiable state of weakness in which, from the same cause, that of England had been for two years.* 1837. 93. Africa. It is now time to resume the thread of the colonial Affairs of history of France in Africa, which had become interesting and important in the very highest degree. The gradual progress of the French from the sea-coast of Algeria had brought them in contact with more formidable and sturdy tribes in the interior, as the advance of the English from the coast of Malabar had brought them into collision with the Mahrattas and Sikhs of Hindostan. The expedition to Algiers had been nobly conceived by the Government of the Restoration, and ably executed by its generals; and the French possessions, when Louis Philippe succeeded, extended all along the sea-coast from Bona on the east to Oran on the west. This was nearly the extent of ancient Libya, so long the granary of the Roman Empire, and which in its flourishing days contained twenty millions of inhabitants. The land was still as fertile, the sun as bright, the climate as salubrious, as when it was the mainstay of the ancient masters of the world; and such were its resources that it might, under judicious management, have been rendered a most valuable offshoot of the French empire, and have for ages to come furnished a safe and capacious outlet for the swarms of prolétaires which crowded its cities and endangered its tranquillity. * The calculation made of the result of the elections of September 1837 was as follows: XXXIII. 1837. tory Arabs, annual mi A very curious circumstance facilitates the colonisation CHAP. of this fruitful region, and has often rendered the possessor of the sea-coast, in the end, master of the interior to the 94. foot of the Atlas, which rears its lofty head into the The migraclouds, and separates Libya from the parched wilderness and their of the Sahara Desert. The fertile district in the north, gration." adjoining the coast, still called from its Latin name Tell (Tellus), is inhabited by tribes of Arabs, who acknowledge, according to the Eastern ideas consecrated in the Koran, no property in land, but in the actual cultivators. Living in tents, and cultivating now one piece of ground, now another, they were truly a nomad agricultural race, and in every age, from Jugurtha downwards, they have defended their country with courage and vigour. But farther to the south, on the slopes and ridges and lofty plateaus which ascend towards the Atlas, the inhabitants were of a still more migratory character. Shut out by the sterility of the soil and the variable nature of the climate, where storms of rain and snow, attracted by the cold summits of the Atlas, are frequent, from the labours of agriculture, they dwell in the mountains with their flocks and herds only in the winter and spring; and when the heats of summer set in they migrate regularly, with camels laden with dates and wool, to the land of labour in the north, where they assist in getting in the harvest, with a portion of which they return on the approach of winter to the moist pastures and fruit-bearing slopes on their native hills. Thus Nature has established a lasting and beneficial industrial intercourse between the cultivators of the plain and the nomads on the high table-lands in the interior; and the possessors of the former enjoy the means of establishing the most durable of all influences which man can acquire over man—that which arises from v. 146, 147. furnishing employment and giving subsistence.1 After many ages of harassing and almost incessant warfare, the Romans had established a permanent dominion over these migratory tribes. They had penetrated their 1 L. Blanc, XXXIII. 1837. 95. The con quests of and Saracens. CHAP. fastnesses, bridged their ravines, and established strongholds on all their most important heights. So complete had been the military possession thus acquired, that subsequent conquerors have done little more than advance on the Romans their footsteps, take advantage of their highways, and erect fortresses on the foundations of their walls. From the sea-coast to the inaccessible ridges of the Atlas, fifty leagues in the interior, the country is traversed by Roman roads and covered by Roman monuments; the Arabs, the Turks, the Europeans, have successively fought on the ancient fields, traversed the ancient bridges, and restored the ancient fortresses. When the Osmanlis established by force and fraud the sway of the Crescent in the regions for which Jugurtha contended, they erected their bastions on the hills which the successors of Scipio had fortified, and with the materials of which their strongholds had been constructed; and when the Spaniards in one age, and the French in another, brought the resources of civilised skill and science to bear on the fortitude of barbarian valour, the principal difficulty with which they had to contend arose from the judgment with which the ancient masters of the world had selected their points of v. 147, 149, defence, and the skill with which they had prepared them against the attacks of any assailant.1 1 L. Blanc, 96. Had the French Government, after the Revolution, Faults of been actuated by prophetic wisdom, or even inspired with Govern- the ordinary feelings of patriotism, it would have been an the Revolu- easy matter, comparatively speaking, to have established the French ment after tion. their authority over all the immense and valuable territory between the Mediterranean and the Atlas which in former times obeyed the Roman sway. All that was required was vigour and perseverance in the outset, followed by protection and paternal government, and the Arabs equally with the natives would have submitted to them as the appointed of God, and blessed their dominion as a deliverance from evil. Any change from the desolation of Ottoman oppression must always be felt as a blessing. XXXIII. 1837. But unfortunately neither did the French Government, CHAP. after the Restoration, possess the means of exerting the requisite strength to fascinate the minds and subdue the resistance of the Orientals, nor was the French character suited to the lasting labours or pacific duties of colonisation. The Chamber of Deputies could not be persuaded, by any efforts on the part of the Ministry, to vote the sum necessary to establish a powerful dominion in Africa. A considerable party regarded their possessions there as an unprofitable and useless burden bequeathed to them by the folly of the Restoration; another thought it should be reduced to the narrowest limits, and restricted to a few fortified posts on the sea-coast. The few who regarded them in their true light as a valuable outlet for the surplus urban population of France, which should be extended to its natural limits between the ocean and the Atlas, were regarded as mere dreamers, and constituted only a fraction of the Assembly. The consequence was, that this noble colony was allowed to languish for want of adequate support; and while not less than 40,000 men were requisite to place it on a respectable footing, the whole armed force, for some years after the v. 148, 154, Revolution, was under 10,000 men.1 1 L. Blanc, dian horse This ruinous reduction of force, the result of the con- 97. tracted views and economical ideas of the class who, in The NumiFrance as in England, had been elevated to supreme men. power, was the more disastrous from the character of the tribes with whom, as they advanced into the interior, the French were brought in contact. Unlike the laborious inhabitant of the fertile fields of the Tell, the Arabs of the interior have inherited all the warlike qualities of their Numidian predecessors, so often felt as formidable by the Roman legions. Mounted on swift steeds of the Arab breed, which they manage with extraordinary skill and dexterity, they are equally embarrassing to an advancing, and formidable to a retreating army. Like the Cossacks, and indeed all Eastern nations, they ride with |