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The late Baron Alderson, in a letter to Mrs. Opie, written just after the intelligence of the Coup d’Etat had arrived, hazards rather a curious speculation with regard to the probable issue of this unexpected crisis. He was just on the point of starting for Paris when the news reached him, and put an end to the expedition:

“I was going there [he writes to Mrs. Opie], but of course do not dream of it now. They seem in a bad way. A nation so unfit for freedom—if that be freedom which requires those who love it to be first wise and good—does not exist. The Celts seem to me to be ‘a bad lot.’ I suppose it will end in Louis Napoleon’s becoming dictator, and then (not unlikely), being shot by an assassin, and the game will begin over again then. The fear is, that the Prætorian guards will make him go to war for their own profit. It is a fearful crisis, I think: and the best that can happen will be for him to be made King or Emperor, and hold his ground in spite of conscience, oaths, and faith which he pledged to the Republic.”