No recognized political party exists which does not contain some true principle; which does not respond to some legitimate aspiration of human society.

At the same time, there is not one which can not serve as a pretext, as a refuge, and as a hope, for the basest passions of our nature.
The most advanced portion of the Liberal party of France is composed of generous spirits, ardent and absolute, who torture a really elevated ideal; that of a society of manhood, constituted with a sort of philosophic perfection; her own mistress each day and each hour; delegating few of her powers, and yielding none; living, not without laws, but without rulers; and, in short, developing her activity, her well-being, her genius, with that fulness of justice, of independence, and of dignity, which republicanism alone gives to all and to each one.
Every other system appears to them to preserve some of the slaveries and iniquities of former ages; and it also appears open to the suspicion of generating diverse interests--and often hostile ones--between the governors and the governed.

They claim for all that political system which, without doubt, holds humanity in the most esteem; and however one may despise the practical working of their theory, the grandeur of its principles can not be despised.
They are in reality a proud race, great-hearted and high-spirited.

They have had in their age their heroes and their martyrs; but they have had, on the other hand, their hypocrites, their adventurers, and their radicals--their greatest enemies.
Young Dardennes, to obtain grace for the equivocal origin of his convictions, placed himself in the front rank of these last.
Until he left college Louis de Camors never knew his uncle, who had remained on bad terms with his father; but he entertained for him, in secret; an enthusiastic admiration, attributing to him all the virtues of that principle of which he seemed the exponent.
The Republic of '48 soon died: his uncle was among the vanquished; and this, to the young man, had but an additional attraction.

Without his father's knowledge, he went to see him, as if on a pilgrimage to a holy shrine; and he was well received.
He found his uncle exasperated--not so much against his enemies as against his own party, to which he attributed all the disasters of the cause.
"They never can make revolutions with gloves on," he said in a solemn, dogmatic tone.