The Timaru Herald. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 20, 1883.

Timaru Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 2727, 20 June 1883, Page 2

The Timaru Herald. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 20, 1883.

The French Ministry are at sixes and sevens again. It is quite a long time, two or three months at least, since there was any change of importance. An individual Minister may have dropped out and another come m occasionally ; but there has been no regular break up, if we remember rightly, since they settled down under M. Ferry, after that trouble about Prince Jerome and the Legitimist scare. The present Cabinet, m fact, have had a long and peaceful term of office, for France under the Republic, where a Ministry seldom hold together for more than a few weeks.

fow, it seems, the Ministers have got ci o loggerheads among themselves, and f" rawn the President into the squabble, r ! boat a matter which of all others ° ught to be tbe subject of complete jj greement m the Government. a France is at war with Anatn, or as it n a often called Tonquin, — not merely s hreatening war, but actually at war, li ending out great armaments of ships '' tud men, and fighting hammer and t: ongs with the Anamese, the Chinese, md any other foes she can find to fight a vith m those parts. This has been t joing on for some weeks past. Yet c >nly now, at this stage of the affair, we [ ieur that the President and the Premier c ire opposed to the conquest of Tonquin, J md that the Minister for Foreign AJfairs is about to resign m consequence { af their action. Then, we suppose, will , follow a party struggle, after the fashion if French party struggles, where every- j body votes against everybody else, and i then the Ministry will vote against one another, and end by retiring m a body. ' Wo wonder how the conquest of Tonquiu is getting on ull this while. It must be , a pleasant service, certainly, when an extensive and exceedingly hazardous expedition can be initiated at the instance of one of the Ministers, against the wish of the President and the Premier, and subsequently, long after operations have been commenced, discountenanced and very likely abandoned, through a dissension m the Cabinet. The French are a very extraordinary people. They have some excellent qualities. They arc perfect masters m some departments of politics. But they have not the remotest idea of the constitutional principle of responsible Government, a principle which seems to be innate m Englishmen all over the world. The leading public men m France are as a rule men of the highest character and of great ability. Yet the ablest among them never understood, after a life time of experience of affairs, what comes naturally to a retired tradesman or a country Bettler m Australia or New Zealand. Major Atkinson and his colleagues do some queer things sometimes, but if they were to behave as M. Ferry and his colleagues are behaving, they would immediately be put out of office, and have very little prospect of ever getting m again. But they could not behave bo, for the reason that no Governor of New Zealand who was not a lunatic or Sir Arthur Gordon, would ever dream of behaving m relation to his Ministers as M. Grevy behaves m relation to his. We can easily understand that the position of affairs m Anam is beginning to give rise to grave anxieties m France, and that sensible men like M. Grcvy and M. Ferry would gladly see the Republic well out of her policy of distant aggression. But we cannot understand their having let the thing go so far, and then fallen out among themselves as to whether it should go farther or not. French statesmen seem bent on making themselves the laughing stock of all nations.