The chief feature of French political life, if one reviews it in its broad outlines, is the increase of stability.  When we remember that that veteran opportunist, Talleyrand, on taking the oath of allegiance to the new Constitution of 1830, could say, “It is the thirteenth,” and that no regime after that period lasted longer than eighteen years, we shall be chary of foretelling the speedy overthrow of the Third Republic at any and every period of Ministerial crisis or political ferment.  Certainly the Republic has seen Ministries made and unmade in bewilderingly quick succession; but these are at most superficial changes—­the real work of administration being done by the hierarchy of permanent officials first established by the great Napoleon.  Even so terrible an event as the murder of President Sadi Carnot (June 1894) produced none of the fatal events that British alarmists confidently predicted.  M. Casimir Perier was quietly elected and ruled firmly.  The same may be said of his successors, MM.  Faure and Loubet.  Sensible, businesslike men of bourgeois origin, they typify the new France that has grown up since the age when military adventurers could keep their heels on her neck provided that they crowned her brow with laurels.  That age would seem to have passed for ever away.  A well-known adage says:  “It is the unexpected that happens in French politics.”  To forecast their course is notoriously unsafe in that land of all lands.  That careful and sagacious student of French life, Mr. Bodley, believes that the nation at heart dislikes the prudent tameness of Parliamentary rule, and that “the day will come when no power will prevent France from hailing a hero of her choice[71].”

[Footnote 71:  Mr. Bodley, France, vol. i. ad fin.]

Doubtless the advent of a Napoleon the Great would severely test the qualities of prudence and patience that have gained strength under the shelter of democratic institutions.  Yet it must always be remembered that Democracy has until now never had a fair chance in France.  The bright hopes of 1789 faded away ten years later amidst the glamour of military glory.  As for the Republic of 1848, it scarcely outlived the troubles of infancy.  The Third Republic, on the other hand, has attained to manhood.  It has met and overcome very many difficulties; at the outset parts of two valued provinces and a vast sum of treasure were torn away.  In those early days of weakness it also crushed a serious revolt.  The intrigues of Monarchists and Bonapartists were foiled.  Hardest task of all, the natural irritation of Frenchmen at playing a far smaller part in the world was little by little allayed.