text:  If for example _la belle France_ had had such a fag-end or outlet during the various crises that she has passed through in the course of the last fifty years how many of her great warriors and equally great tyrants might have lived and died trappers! And truly neither Europe nor mankind in general would have been much the worse off if those instruments of the greatest despotism that ever disguised itself under the mask of freedom--the Massenas and Murats and Davousts and scores more of suchlike laced and decorated gentry--had never been heard of