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France after the chaotic days of Mazarin." However, it
 
collapsed in 1789 with a crash and a thunder which rever-
 
berated for a score of years all over the world. Thus the
 
best laid schemes of Bourbon autocrats failed as dismally
 
as that of their Stuart cousins. Governments from the top
 
fail as often as those from the bottom; and every great
 
failure brings a sad social reaction, thousands and mil-
 
lions of helpless men laying down their lives in the un-
 
happy process. Why may not statesmen study the past and
 
avoid such catastrophes?
 
 
                             V.                             
 
 
When Napolean I came to his end in 1815, a great
 
world congress had set everything to rights in Vienna and
 
told everybody how to behave for a hundred years; but
 
soon came the accustomed chaos in victorious as well as
 
defeated countries. From 1818 to 1846 there was depression;
 
here and there, everywhere, as now the markets of Europe,
 
except for cotton, were dead for young America, and 
 
Europe was distracted by debts and new revolutions. Would
 
mankind never learn the effects of war?
 
In far-off Kentucky a lean, lanky, half-educated
 
but clever orator, Henry Clay, worked out in 1823 another
 
economic nationalism. He would bar the ports of the United
 
States against cheap but excellent European goods, asso-
 
ciate all Latin-American peoples with those of his own
 
country, create huge markets by building cities, roadways
 
and canals and leave the builders of the new industry and
 
the new-old banking system the utmost freedom in exploiting
 
 
their