Prince Bismarck seems to be doing his best to produce
in France the impression that he despises, and wishes it to be known that he despises, the French people. Last week he took some pains, in answering the appeal of the Alsatian and Lorraine Deputies for the abolition of the special restraints under which the annexed provinces live, to gird at the French Assembly, especially directing a taunt at its President, M. Buffet. Again, in explaining to a Hungarian, Herr von Jokai, his views on the Austrian, Hungarian, Russian, and Eastern questions, he went out of his way to speak of the French as barbarians in whom their great accomplishments, as cooks, tailors, and hair- dressers, barely concealed the savage nature beneath. We have speculated elsewhere on the real motive of Prince Bismarck in putting forward with such cynical frankness these violent criticisms on France while she is lying humiliated at his feet. But , according to Herr von Jokai, he spoke to him of the Pope in language even more violent, and, we suppose, equally premeditated. And certainly he is pressing on in the Reichstag laws even more severe than those of Prussia against the Catholics. Apparently he identifies France and the Papacy, and hopes to irritate them into a common submission or a common aggression, —which he thinks would be equally fatal to both. If he succeeds in the latter of the two alternatives, can he be meditating dismembering both Powers, re-creating the old Burgundian duchy in France, and starting a new anti-Pope, on the occasion of Pio Nono's death, in Germany or Switzerland ?
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