THE DECAY OF THE IMPERIALIST PARTY.

West Coast Times, Issue 3707, 21 February 1881, Page 2

THE DECAY OF THE IMPERIALIST PARTY.

(Le Temps, Pabis, Nov. 30th.)

The debris of the Bonapartist party are crumbling away more and more. The public may have seen by" the letters of M. M. Mitchell and Lengle that the group of the Appeal to the People is completely dislocated. The terms in which M. Lengle has couched his resignation, sent iv to the head of the group, M. Granivet, are more significant even than the resignations themselves. "The confusion of ideas," snid the Deputy of the HauteGaronne, "in which the group of the Appeal to the People has yesterday shown that they wished to live is not proper," &c, &c.

Never, it will be admitted, has a more severe judgment been passed on a party, for what worse could one approach men with who pretend to form a Government Party, which aspires to put their hands on the country, than living in an absolute state of confusion about everything? What is a political group whose members no longer agree either as to ideas, principles, orjpers ons ? What influence can such a group exercise ? To what electoral or other action can it pretend ? The avowal of M. Lengle, an Bvowal corroborated by the withdrawal, effected or announced, of several other members, is in reality the registration of the end of the Bonapartist Party. This party is not merely divided ; it exists no longer. In vain will it be attempted to reconstitute it on a new basis ; it will be ia vain to try to oppose a Haentjens Committee to the Ganivet Committee ; in vain the Eobert Mitchell and Lengle section will sacrifice on the altar of Prince Jerome the Paul de Cassagnac and Jules Amigues section. All this will not prevent their constantly finding themselves in the presence of the same disorder of which the Imperialist now presents the spectacle. This disorder is connected with reasons deeper than the Bonapartists think. It has its source in the very origin of the Imperialist Party, which at all times has only been a party of expedients, not a party of principles. The Empire never had anything but the value of a fact, not to say an adventure- If one looks into it closely one sees easily that the Empire, the second still more than the first, established itself and lived on a number of contradictory ideas. At all times in our history, -for three quarters of a oentury, the most opposite principles were struggling together in the midst of the Imperialist Party. This confusion of ideas and principles, so categorically denounced by M, Lengle, has always existed, at least in a latent state, ia a party which began with the principle of the national sovereignty to arrive at Caesarism, chat is to say, the most absolute negation of that sovereignty.

It was, therefore, inevitable that this confusion, destined necessarily to increase, should become, at a given moment, a cause of death for the party. This moment was seen advancing from day to day. It has now quite come ; for those who dissent must not imagine that they will resuscitate the party to whom they have just given the coup de grace, by renouncing any confusion of ideas and principles This confusion, the basis of the Imperial regime, has been and remains the condition .tine qua nan of the existence of the Imperialist; Party. To suppress that confusion is to suppress the party.