II.—THE BRIGHTER SIDE.
IF this were the whole truth, as to most Englishmen and Germans it appears to be the whole truth, we should despair alike of Paris and of France ; but we seem to catch every now and then a glimpse of something beyond, of causes for the worst calamities of the country, which may make them, after an interval of suffering, anything but calamitous. Amidst all the disorders of the day there are signs, few it is true, but still visible, of the coming of a better time. One-half at least of the evils of France seem to us the result of the virtues and not of the vices of Frenchmen, of their capacities rather than of their weaknesses. This very revolt of Paris is the result of two feelings, neither of them intrinsically evil,— of a disgust with a corrupt and lying Past so deep as to pro- duce a strain towards an Utopia, only to be condemned because it is unattainable. The Communists of the world, and more especially of Paris, are crying for the moon ; but at least it is for a more perfect, and not a less perfect, brotherhood of mankind that they are ready to die fight- ing. We in England suppose all this to be a mere cover for selfish passions, but mark that the first act of the Commune was to authorize the election of a Prussian, Frankel, that men of every nationality are accepted as officers, that the disgraceful persecution of Germans ceased, that the sneers and insults to Englishmen were exchanged for hearty expressions of good-will, that as we write the Commune has decreed the destruction of the column of the Place Vendome as an unwarrantable insult to van- quished nations. The mass of those who obey the Com- mune are not Communists, but they also are going out to fight, or suspending business, or suffering hardships quietly for a cause which is not the cause of their own stomachs. We Englishmen have forgotten what municipal patriotism once was, what the Apostle meant when he called himself, with irrepressible pride in his house, a " citizen of no mean city "; but though in our modern world a Frenchman's patriotism should be for France, patriotism for Paris is better than self-love. And these men feel it to their hearts' core, and sybaritic, pleasure-loving, thoughtless, or evil as we think them, will postpone the blessed hour of tranquil money-get- ting, will even elect that it shall never come, will slay, fight, imprison, be imprisoned, in fine suffer all things in order that the city of their love may maintain her rank. In that love there is hope for the future, as there is in that persistent devotion to the Republic, that angry suspiciousness that all save themselves are secretly hos- tile to the object of their loyalty. Imagine for a moment the Republic established and at work, would not this pas-
sion replace the old loyalty to a King, be instantly and by itself a high conservative force ? The " cheap defence of nations " is just this,—the devotion to an idea loftier and wider than that of one's own interest. These men, some of them at all events, wish to take from the rich to give to the poor, but their motive, their conscious motive at all events, is that passion of pity and of sympathy with the common millions who perish like weeds, which in our time has done or is doing
the work of a new faith. Citizen Bergeret, compositor and general, fighting " that the poor be no longer despised," as he told the Telegraph's correspondent, is a very anarchic figure, and citizen Smith, patriot and publican, resisting the grant of port wine to " those brutes of paupers " is a very orderly one • but we have some latent doubts as to the comparative nobleness of the two, and no doubt at all as to their compara- tive force. And then the ability of these men. There are no statesmen among them, we are told, no men of high degree, none even of education, none with visible incomes ; they are tailors, printers, porters, mere workmen, " who desire not to be despised," fellows whom English correspondents regard as the very scum on the water of the ditch. The statesmen have fled. The rich have emigrated unopposed. The very clerks have resigned. All that is respectable in Paris is trembling for its life and for its money, and these contempti- ble wretches organize a Government in a day which no one disobeys ; maintain such order, writes our Catholic correspon- dent, a lady as hostile to the Reds as religion and cultivation can make her, that " Paris is as safe as a bird's nest ;" regi- ment, arm, and send forth an army of a hundred thousand men, and for weeks defy all the efforts of 80,000 regular troops. They are the " creatures of the mob," but they dismiss its favourites ; they use bayonets but they displace Generals as Napoleon never could, and after every change they make it is noted that a " more dangerous " man is at the top, that is, an abler one ; that the reformed regiments show " more fero- city," that is, a higher degree of fighting power. The deeper the depth from which the Reds are drawn the greater the wonder at their discipline, and the self-abnegation of their followers. Is it a feeble race which, without a vestige of a government or an institution or an authority left, amid a fierce conflict of opinion, and with none but workmen to use as agents, organizes a capital into a mighty State, able and willing to throw 100,000 men into the battle-field, so to maintain order that crime has ceased, so to quell the bitterness of its own heart as to terminate suddenly an international persecution ? It seems to us that the qualities which make nations great are all here, however misdirected ; that if these men found a leader, if after this frightful churning of the waves a man appeared out of the waters, the course of European history might be very different from what Englishmen and Germans, bewildered by the melodramatic catastrophes of a few months, expect that it will be.
But the positive dangers of the situation. What of the hatred between the cities and the towns ? It points to federation, a system inimical, it may be, to the aggressive power of France, but not inimical to the full development of her internal life, and specially not to its development in that bright variety of forms which France since the Revolution has so lacked. But France has no men ? How many had she during the reign of Louis XV. ? This much at least is certain, that never at any period did men who can climb mount so fast, never was the people so ready to welcome any leaders. An Italian Jew, an Americanized Frenchman, a Pole,—no matter, the last rag of hampering prejudice has been discarded, and the tools are to the workmen, be he who he may. There is no loyalty to anybody ? No, but there is to ideas, be they the ideas of the Republic, of the White Flag, of Parliamentary Government, or of the Commune, such loyalty, so passionate, so inveterate, so nearly akin to a religion, that the first difficulty of France is the bitterness of her divisions, otherwise the in- curable loyalty of her people to their convictions. But these ideas are irreconcilable ? No more irreconcilable than the ideas of Geneva and the ideas of Canton St. Gall, just so irrecon- cilable as to give to the policy of Federalism a hold. The irreligion and the superstition of France ? Are neither of them indifferentism or hypocrisy, and therefore neither of them sources of weakness. The indifference or submissiveness of the peasantry ? Is entirely superficial. These peasants be- come the fiery workmen of the great cities, and their sub- missiveness while it lasts acts like the stolid belief of English- men that what is is right, as a conservative force, a resisting medium which saves every movement from flying into infinite space.
But the terrible external situation of the country, a con- quering army within its borders, a crushing debt, no Govern- ment, no army, a possibility or more of total subjugation by another and a different race ? It is all true, and it was all still truer of Germany in 1810, and yet in 1815 the soldier who is now Kaiser William entered Paris in triumph. History does not repeat itself, and the deliverance of France will not come as the deliverance of Germany came ; but that it will come we may rest assured,—perhaps, and not improbably, from German forbearance or enlightened self-interest ; perhaps, and not improbably, from a burst of disease among the conquering host ; perhaps, though improbably, from the rise of one of those men whose function is to deliver nations. What is the condi- tion of France compared with the condition of Holland under Philip ? We attribute too much importance to the incidents of a few months, under-estimate too grossly the resources which must exist in every nation of six-and-thirty millions, forget too completely in our prosperity how the wretched fight. We cannot foresee or attempt to foresee the future ; we have acknowledged without stint the signs of evil abroad in France : but we see no sign yet of the only evil, death, from which in this world there is for nations, as for individuals, no release. It is but a day since Pnivost Paradol died because the only escape from Caesar was in suicide, and the Caesar is at Chislehurst an exile.
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