THE SITUATION IN FRANCE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 74, 26 September 1874, Page 10

THE SITUATION IN FRANCE.

Steadily and logically the condition of affairs in France continues to grow worse. Government is at a dead-lock. The future of the country is illumined by hardly a glimpse of hope. The present shows httle but the promise of further complications. In the words of the * Univers,' words marked by a calm appreciation of the realities of the situation, " there is a strong reason for no longer hoping the re-estab-lishment of the Monarchy ; namely, that we are less worthy of it than ever. The manner in which the press generally has received the last Uoyal manifesto reveals a state of opinion absolutely opposed to the character of ro/alty." There can be no doubt of the fact. The immense majority of the leading organs of opinion have cltarly shown lhat the return of the Commune is in their eyes a slighter calamity •than the return of the Monarch. In a word, Henri V. is not a man of the age. To be a man of the age, he should not write such manifestoes at nil. He should, like the Napoleons, cram his speeches and proclamations with the catch-words of the day, with "rights of man" und "sovereign people," and " enlightened democracy " and " principles of 89. Such phrases would do ro harm whatever to his liberty to exercise the most arbitrary authority. With a few words about "modern culture," "obsolete superstitions," and "the conquests of Tr 6r u y> he might atfcain tlie unbri( lled power of a Kaiser or a Tsar. He has unfortunately persisted in declaring that, while resolved to respect the wishes of his people on all matters properly within the purview of Parliamentary Government, while warmly accepting the system ot representative assemblies, there are, under even limited Monarchies, limits to the caprioes of a mere Parlhmentarv majority. This was enough, it is plain, to render Henri V. more " impossible"" than ever. The argument that he has simply told the truth is alto- ! gether irrelevant. Pretenders who mean to succeed in their pretentions have no business with truth. What a nation educated in the precepts of •« modern civilization " requires, is not truth, but flattery, lhat a Napoleon, a Prim, a Bismarck, should trample public rights and liberties under foot, is no harm whatever so long as every invasion oi right, every outrage on conscience, is heralded by the proper amount of phraseology. It is a fatal objection, exclaims the press of Paris, that the Corate fie Uwmbord holds that a king not only reigns but governs. What ! -Does the Emperor William merely reign ? Does the President of the United fctates merely reign? Does Marshal Serrano merely rei«n ? And is it so unreasonable that a King of France should also claim a right to share m the Government of his Kingdom ? Nay, to put it more plainly, has nob a King of France the powers of a Marshal, xavested by a parliamentary vote with an undefined authority? Marshal MaoMahon, however, can send messages, and refuse resignations, and demand dissolutions, with the full applause of the Parliamentarians ; and were he to decline to-morrow to obey a Parliamentary vote abolishing his functions, the very men warmest in his tletonce would be those same Parliamentarians. Any sort of authority which stoops to deoUro that it borrows everything from the people tor the people, can act as it pleases with the applause of the people. It is perfectly permitted to wrong the people to any extent ; it is only unendurable to say that the people may do wrong. The absolutism ot the Empu-e, the dictatorship of a Gambetta, call xip no protests in the name of modern ideas. To confess a faith in religion, to set the DiTine law above plebiscites, this is the single unpardonable sin. ,w 7 "tITtT moSfc com P lefc e appropriateness that a Bonapartist deputy, M. Lans, proposed the resolution in the recent debate, which was accepted by the Government. The Liberalist "Dukes," the men ot the ±Jroghe and Decazes school, have prevented the restoration of the Jung, aid have thereby ensured the restoration of the Emperor. It is a jeat to talk of the outlawry of the Empire. At this moment ■France is the Empire over again, so far as it is anything. As has been truly said, there is nothing in the administration, in the army, in the law, m the public instruction, that is not Napoleonic. The army has no other traditions than the Napoleonic legend of Marengo and Austerlitz and Solionno. The entire French administration is Casarean; the law lives in the Code Napoleon. The rising generations are educated 111 the spirit of the Imperialist University of France. Under the name of the ancien regime it is the entire past of France which is repudiated. Modern France dates from the First Napoleon, the heir t ?d I oi p n ? ze ™4 th ° devolution. « Charlemagne is but a barbaSn w>i S^ ," tyranfc; such is «* summary of the national Jiistoiy With Napoleon commences modern civilization." It is in Tarn, then, that there is a sort of solemn make-believe kept up about the Empire being abolished and dead. It is neither abolished nor dead, lhe Republic is not only dead but rotten. At the best it can only evolve new towns of putrefaction, new odours of malaria. The S^SW I^ 1 " ifc iSj On fche fidl of life and •vigoxu ; but it is betrayed, overpowered, and in exile. The Empire atone remains, and even the "Dukes" will shortly understand that this a the case. « The Christian Monarchy of France," writes Henri V ., is m its very essence a Limited Monarchy, which has nothing to borrow from those Governments of adventure which promise a golden age and lead to abysses." But is it what "modern civilization" reqxurcs ? Who cares for a Monarchy being limited, so long as it is Christian ? It is here that the obstacle presents itself ; it is hero that the impossibility stands confessed. Henri V. is a Christian ; so long *T bYt' 1S to the France of the Revolution.—