THE PRESIDENT OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LI, Issue 5610, 17 February 1879, Page 5

THE PRESIDENT OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC.

(Prom the Argus.) M. Chevy, whose name suggested to Prince Bismarck the cynical and semi-English joke about the French cooking in their own sauce, during the siege of Paris, has arrived, at the age of 63, at the highest distinction attainable in the French Republic, and it will be a source of no small annoyance to the Bonapartists in that country that they will be obliged to observe the anniversary of his birthday with some show of ceremonial respect, beeause he happens to have been born, like the First Napoleon, on the 15th of August. A man of austere morals and irreproachable character, with no geniality in his voice or manner, and with anything but an imposing presence, M. Grevy has nevertheless succeeded in conciliating the respect and securing the confidence of a nation which is popularly supposed to be very indulgent towards certain forms of immorality, which sets a high value upon an engaging and winsome maintien, and which freely exercises its ridicule upon plainness of feature in women and personal insignificance in men. The new President has been accurately described as “ a short dapper man, with a face smooth shaved, all but a trim fringing of grey whiskers, thin firm lips, a square bald head, grey eyes, and a peremptory voice.” If you were to meet him in the streets of Paris you might easily mistake him for a beneficed English clergyman, who had laid aside his professional costume while travelling abroad. In the Chamber of Deputies he presided with an impartiality which was rarely called in question, and with a quiet dignity which owed quite as much to his cool and equable temperament as to his force of character and strength of intellect. As a politician he has been a miracle of consistency. What he was at 17 he is at 65—a moderate Republican, who has never bowed the knee to any of the idols successively set up for worship by his countrymen, and never concealed his dislike to the bad men of his own set, and his disapprobation of the wrong principles and the wrong policy into which his own party may have been betrayed from time to time. When the House of Orleans was in the ascendant he remained true to his republican convictions, and when Louis Napoleon filched the diadem of France M. Grevy patiently waited for brighter days. Born in 1813, at Mont-sous-Yaudrez, in the sub-alpine department of Jura, where the inhabitants partake more of the Swiss than of the French characteristics, Francis Paul Jules Grevy was sent, in the first instance, to be educated at Poligny, a small town about 50 miles from Geneva. From thence he was removed to Paris, and was residing as a law student in the Quartier Latin when the Revolution of 1830 broke out. He joined the insurgents, fought with great coolness as well as courage, and returned to his studies after the flight of Charles the Tenth. But his abilities seem to have been discerned by good judges, and it was not long before he was engaged as an advocate for the defence of persons who had been politically compromised in the reign of Louis Philippe. ’ What was chiefly remarkable about the rising barrister was his selfsuppression. Ha preferred his clients’ interests to his own. He laboured with all his might to procure their acquittal, and not to make professional kudos for himself. He even rebuked the political charlatanry of the men he defended, when ho saw that they were posing and posturing so as to make themselves appear as martyrs and heroic victims of persecution in the public eye. Some of'them did not know what to make of the honest little advocate who showed so much zeal for Republican principles, combined with such an Uficdnoealed aversion towards voluble humbugs and self-seeking mountebanks. They had gone into politics as a profitable business, by which they hoped to make money and achieve notoriety, whereas

he was anxious to serve hia country, and not * himself. To the demagogue, such devotion is necessarily unintelligible, but it was appreciated by the public, and he acquired a solid reputation for disinterested patriotism and calm good sense among enlightened politicians ; so that, when the ' Orleans dynasty was overthrown by the Bevolntion of 1848, M. Qrevy was selected by the Provisional Government to act as Chief Commissioner in his native department of the Jura. He met with a frigid reception at first; but after a time, the moderation of his language, the rectitude of his principles, and his obvious honesty of purpose, banished distrust and extorted general confidence, and when the Constituent Assembly came to be elected, he was returned to it by the votes of, 65,150 grateful electors. Almost as soon as he . had taken his seat, he was chosen Vice-presi-dent of the Assembly andmember of the Committee of Justice. Belonging to the party of the Left, he was conspicuous by his moderation as well as by his earnestness. He was. not one of those feather-brained fanatics who think that political institutions can only be reformed by means of broken heads aqd flaming houses, and he would have nothing whatever to do with party coalitions, involving the temporary surrender or abeyance of great principles. Generally speaking, during, this period of his political career he found himself opposed to M. Thiers; and he endeavoured to checkmate the ambitipna. views of both General Cavaignac and Louis Napoleon, by proposing that the Chief of the Executive should be styled “ President ,of the Council of Ministers,” and shopjd be removable by a vote of the Constituent Assembly. This was lost, however, by 643 votes to 158. Mr Grevy opposed the oxpedition to Borne, and on his re-election, to the Assembly continued to maintain an attitude, of hostility to the party of the Elysee,. whom, he sagaciously regarded as conspiring against the public liberties. When the great crime' of December, 1851, was perpetrated, he. was' arrested and consigned to Mazas, and it was in M. Grevy’s house, No. 15 Eue Eichelieu, as Victor Hugo tells us, that the latter and some of the other members of the Assembly met to organise a resistance to the usurper, and issued a proclamation declaring him ‘an. outlaw.

After his release from prison M. G/cvy resumed the active practice of his. profession, and did not re-enter political life until the! year 1868, when his old constituents, sent him, into the Assembly by such an overwhelming majority—22,42B votes against 10,290 recorded in favour of the official candidate—as. to create quite a consternation in Imperial circles. It was the first defeat the Government had sustained ;n the provinces since 1852, and it was justly regarded as ominous of its declining influence. Another election, occurred in the year following—the limits pf the electorate having been curtailed in the meantime—when M. Grevy received 15,952 suffrages out of a total poll of 18,419. He separated himself from his party on two occasions in 1870—when he voted against the return of the Orleans Princes, and when he refused to have anything to do with the Revolution of the 4th of September, “ Opposed to violence in every shape,” we are told, “he could draw no distinction between popular and autocractieal illegalities. The members of the Corps Legislatif, said he, were many of them elected under pressure, but they were the people’s representatives nevertheless, and it was a citizen’s duty to accept their will as. law till a new Assembly was returned. These sentiments, which were shared to the full by M. Thiers, established between the two a political friendship,*’ which was maintained until the death of the latter, Let us not omit.to add that M. Grevy was also an uncompromising enemy of the plebiscite in any shape or form. In 1871 the electors of the Jura again re» turned their old representative to the Legislature, of which he was appointed President, an office which again devolved upon him when the two Chambers were elected under the new constitution. In the early days of the Republic M. Grevy’s efforts were largely directed to restrain what he regarded as the dangerous impetuosity of M. Gambetta j and it is related that while this fiery Cyclops was at Tours, “ struggling like 10 ordinary Ministers against Prussian force, Bonapartist intrigues, and bureaucratic red tape combined, M. Grevy was among those who insisted that an Assembly should be convoked to give the Republican Government a legal sanction. Gambetta refused, adding in the heat of argument that the time was one for acting, not for deliberating—though deliberating was not the exact word he used. Whereat M. Grevy retorted, “Do what you may you will never be a Republican j you are fated to die in the skin of a rebel.” But the instinct of justice is so strong, and the love of impartiality is so deep and ardent in the mind of M. Grevy, that he was accustomed to allow M. Gambetta greater latitude in the Assembly than any other member perhaps; and would sometimes depute his own place to one of the vice-presidents when the rhetorical athlete was about to mount the tribune, lest he (M. Grevy) should be tempted to exercise his authority in what might appear to be an invidious manner towards the speaker. Since then, however, M. Gambetta has acquired habits of self-restraint, and the relations of himself andM. Grevy have been of a more cordial character accordingly. Seven years ago an Englishman- inJParxs, who had excellent opportunities of knowing them both, wrote as follows concerning them, almost, as it will be seen, in a strain of prophecy : —“ It requires no divination to foresee that if the Republic escapes being strangled either by avowed enemies or by indiscreet friends, Grevy and Gambetta may both of them, at some future date, sit side by side in a Republican senate as ex-Presidents of the commonwealth. Jules Grevy is, of all others, the man whose public virtues, talents, and private austerity best fit him to be M. Thiers’ immediate successor ; and after him Gambetta, whose blood will probably have grown more tepid by that time, may be installed in the Presidential chair without any chance of his entailing a fall of all the securities on ’Change. Is it presumption to dream so far into the future P Perhaps ; but one may be pardoned for feeling confidence in coming events when one reflects that so long as M. Grevy is to the fore, the Republic need not perish for want of that rare thing—a bravo and steady man at the helm.”

France is fortunate in being able to command at such a time, the service of an educated and experienced statesmen, whose whole public career has shown him to be possessed of that moderation which, as Burke says, “is the virtue only of superior minds. It requires a deep courage and full of reflection," he goes on to say, “to be temperate when the voice of multitudes—the specious mimic of fame and reputation—passes judgment against you. The impetuous desire of an unthinking public will endure no course but what conducts to splendid and perilous extremes. Then, to dare to be fearful when all about you are full of presumption and confidence, and when those who are bold at the hazard of others would punish your caution and disaffection, is to show a mind prepared for its trial. It discovers, in the midst of general levity, a self-possessing and collected character, which, sooner or later, bids fair to attract everything to it as to a centre.” And this, if we have read his public career aright, is an accurate description of M. Grevy. Bis is “ a self-possessing and collected character," and therefore it is possible he will draw the nation to him “as to a centre.”

Pbbsence of Mind. —The Bendigo Evening News relates the following: — as a very valuable mare, the property-Of the firm of Messrs M'Oulloch and, Co., was going along Bernal street, it suddenly dropped down in an exhausted condition. Sir Brownlee, who was passing in a conveyance at the time, jumped out, and upon making an examination of the animal he found it to be suffering from the effects of a sunstroke. With great promptitude he at once applied ice and water to the head, heart, and loins, and after working with great patience for over an hour he succeeded in reducing the pulse to 80 deg., after which the animal was able to get up, and with the assistance of six men walked to its stables in Willis -’street. Great praise is due to Mr Brownlee for the prompt and thoughtful way in which he acted, for undoubtedly without it the poor animal must have perished."