TOPICS OF THE DAY.
IS A RESTORATION POSSIBLE IN FRANCE? THE Monarchists in France are evidently in high spirits at the success which, as they conceive, will now attend their plans. The Assembly being away, the Government does not see its foes, and fancies therefore they have disappeared. Their account of the recent expedition of the Comte de Paris to Frohsdorf is that the eldest Orleanist—we cannot call him the Orleanist leader,—retaining his view of the right of France to Parliamentary Government, renounced at Vienna his right to the Throne as heir of Louis Philippe, and pledged his family not to oppose the restoration of the head of the House of France. If the Assembly voted him the Crown he might take it, but if they acknowledge Henri Cinq he would not resist. He may be perfectly honest in this concession, for he may not care to reign, or may see that he cannot reign with- out Legitimist help, or may hold the odd theory attributed by close observers to Louis Philippe, that after all he was only a usurper ; but we cannot understand the exultation of the Legitimists. We see their theory easily enough. They hope or believe that the majority of the Assembly thus reunited will, on their return to their seats, simply decree that they recognise Henry Cinq as King of France. They cannot elect him, for he would refuse that, but they can recognise him. That decree once passed, no resistance is, as they fancy, possi- ble, for Marshal MacMahon has promised to obey any decree of the Assembly ; the Civil authorities have all been secured by sweeping changes, and still more sweeping threats ; and the peasantry themselves will be either charmed with the Restoration, or will be merely passive. The King, restored to his throne, will grant what liberties he pleases ; the nobles will be gratified with a Second Chamber ; the priests with the control of education ; and the ancient happiness of France will be restored with her ancient Monarchy. It is not believed that the Comte de Chambord will object, for he will be re- ceived without conditions ; his hereditary right will be acknowledged, and his power of serving the Church will be most pleasing to his soul. It is even conceived that he might, as unconditioned King, improve or suppress the White Flag, while his objection to election would be removed by the decree of the Legislature being formulated as a mere recognition of his right.
This is the plan, and provided no link in it gives way, there is no doubt that it is a conceivable one, and that the descen- dant of Hugo Capet might for an hour or two remount the throne of France, thus terminating in theory the cycle of Revolution by a return to the ancient order of affairs. But then there are so many links to be retained unbroken. The first of all, the unity among the majority of the Assembly, is said to be perfect; but the truth is that it is only nominal, that although the Bonap&rtists might not vote, great bodies of the Orleanists and of the Left Centre would break away at once. They desire Monarchy, but not unconditioned Monarchy. They desire a throne, but not a throne with bishops for its principal supporters. They desire order, but not order sure to be fiercely attacked on the very next opportunity. They may even some of them desire a Court, but not a Court in which a powerful banker will be excluded from the circle, in which they will be made to feel all that galling insolence of which the descen- dants of the Crusaders are such passed masters, in which birth will be everything and strength nothing, in which their private religious opinions will act as passports or as barriers to official favour. There will be when it comes to the point such heavy secessions of bourgeois Orleanists, that we question if the vote can be carried even by a majority of one, while the Left will stand united to a man. They will either defeat the measure, or by seceding deprive the recognition of all moral weight, and rouse not only the great cities of France, but even the peasantry, to an active demand for a new election. The great cities might be put down, no doubt, by the soldiery— though Paris fascinates soldiers as well as foreigners—but the peasantry cannot be ; and the peasantry out of Brittany hold the White Flag to be the signal for the restoration of tithes and of feudal obligations, the long tradition of which, as De Tocqueville has pointed out, shows how unutterably they were hated. The majority may pledge themselves that nothing of the kind shall happen, but what may an unconditioned King not do, surrounded by men whom the peasants feel to be, to the extent of their power, their foes ? The priests have ceased to persecute, but Frenchmen have not ceased to believe they would if they had the power, and though seigneurs have ceased to oppress, they are careless to con- ceal their social scorn of the canaille. Let In remember the horrible incident in the Dordogne, before we assert that thepeasants have forgiven the aristocracy. We disbelieve in a peasant welcome for the King, and doubt whether even the Army, with its new chaplains, appointed avowedly to ascertain the temper of the regiments, will be cordially obedient. They have no tradition of victory connected with the Bourbons. They may, and probably will, put down any revolt; but a third of them at least are Republicans, and all of them connected with the peasantry and the artisans. Even the officers, who, in such cases, must not be confounded with the army, will be little apt to hail a regime in which interest, and interest secured by pedigree, will be all in all. Nor will they be fascinated by the idea of having to fight for the Church,. to which more than half of them do not belong, or of attack- ing Italy and Germany at once on behalf of a Holy Father whom, under Napoleon, they compelled to send his treasures. to Paris. The French Army wishes to recover its prestige, nob to be marched into Italy with all Germany on its flank.
We do not believe that a Restoration, in the plain and. Legitimist sense of the word, is possible at all, without a long civil war, and if it were, it would be a misfortune for Europe.. What France needs is settled order, and some organisation. under which she could change her ruler and even her ruling class without a revolution, without effort, in fact, save a vote from a new Assembly. A Parliamentary system, honestly worked, or a Republic, can of course give this, as the latter did give it when M. Thiers resigned, but a King by divine right cannot. He cannot resign, or, in France, remain posing as a. "fatted hog." Henri Cinq may be as moderate as possible when on the throne, but he cannot, with his ideas, give his. people a final right to control him. He cannot, for instance, accept a Parliament or a Ministry which would refuse aid to- Rome, or disestablish the Church, or establish secular educa- tion. He would be the scorn of his very enemies if he did,. and yet if he did not, he would be a mere clerical despot,. reigning by his own will and that of the Army behind him. Armies never obey clerics, and his reign, unless a grand' soldier, would be a mere series of coups critat or attempts at revolution. Of course if he, with his pedigree, and hia hold over the Catholics, and his mystical claims, were also the man on horseback who could recover Alsace and Lorraine and the prestige of France by his own genius, he might for his own life do anything; but nobody attributes to Henri Cinq, far as he is from the imbecile men think him, any qualities of that sort. He would at best be another Louis XVIII., with a Catholic turn instead of a sceptical one, and a talent for writing dignified nothings instead of a talent for sarcastic epigram, and we do not believe that he would iz. any way revive the confidence of France either in herself ot- her rulers. He would be merely a highly placed mark for- the discontent which antiquated or clerical government creates in France, just as the new church to be erected on the Buttes. of Montmartre will be the first mark, or more likely the first fortress, of any new revolutionary outburst. Paris can be- shelled from that church dangerously, and it is at least aw probable as not that this is the first use to which it will be turned. What is the use of such an attempt unless France desires it, and how can anyone tell if France desires it without an appeal to the electors ? That will be the cry all over France, and we should not be in the least surprised if at the eleventh hour that were the condition laid down by Henri Cinq himself. It would be in exact accordance with an intellect which has convinced itself that some day or other Divine Right will be reacknowledged in the country in which for four hundred years it was never questioned.
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