ou, EUROPE AND THE FRENCH REPUBLIC 15 
her security and her commerce, and to resist such domina- 
tion. to the last was her traditional policy. Of all the 
European Powers, England alone could meet France on 
equal terms. Her fleets swept the seas, her subsidies had 
made the coalition possible. "The devotion of her people 
to their country and its institutions was as deep a8 hat 
of the French. Burke’s panegyrics on the Constitution 
expressed the feelings of the vast mass of Englishmen, It 
is the great tragedy of history that these two peoples, So 
noble in war and in peace, should, in this supreme crisis, 
have faced each other in mortal combat. Coincident with 
military success, France seemed to have achieved internal 
peace by the adoption of a new constitution, which confided 
8xecutive power to a Directory of five members and the 
legislative to a bicameral Parliament. A royalist insurrec- 
tion in Paris was suppressed, thanks, in large part, to the 
energy of a Corsican officer of artillery named Napoleon 
Bonaparte. But internal order could not be maintained 
without peace. The terrible feuds of the Revolution had 
decimated the country, leaving behind them hatreds not 
8asy to appease, while the concentration of the national 
energies upon the prosecution of the war left politics to 
men of inferior intelligence and morality. The mass of the 
population desired only to be left in peace to enjoy the gains 
of the Revolution, but had not sufficient energy and political 
instruction to impose such a policy upon its governors. 
Moreover, national sentiment demanded the maintenance of 
the conquests made with such vast Sacrifices ; no Govern- 
ment would dare to abandon them, and without such 
CONCESSiIONS a lasting peace was Impossible. Thus a vicious 
circle was created. To maintain the gains of war fresh wars 
were necessary, and. the continuance of war meant the sub- 
ordination of political liberty to military necessities. Thus