THE FRENCH SENATE ON THE FRENCH POSITION.
IS there no friend of peace left in France except the Emperor Napoleon ? If any of our readers wish to understand how profoundly recent events have stirred the national vanity and the military pride of France, we recom- mend them to study carefully the extraordinary speech of Baron Brenier in the Senate, and to remember that it was followed by great applause. The Senate, a body filled with marshals, great magistrates, old officials, grave personages of all kinds, was discussing the Bill for the Reorganization of the Army when Baron Brenier rose. He is a civilian and a diplomatist, employed at Naples by Louis Philippe, a man of much experience and much eloquence, yet well accus- tomed to weigh words. France might have well expected from him an able but measured defence of the Bill, and of the policy of its author, wise at least in one act of his life— that which recognized the merits of Baron Brenier and seated him in the Senate. Instead of this, he burst into a fierce tirade against the Bill as not going far enough, and announced, amid nearly universal applause, a policy the keynote of which is, that France is to be ready at all times and under all circum- stances to dictate to Europe. He declared that the Bill would only provide a movable force of 540,000 men, which in the present condition of Europe was insufficient to maintain the position of France. He believed that the German Empire was about to reappear, and in presence of that portentous apparition every French citizen ought to be made into a soldier. Defen- sive armaments were not enough ; was the Army sufficient "to make French influence felt abroad ?" It was by occasionally " striking terror " that France had always kept up a European respect for her power. He believed Count von Bismarck to be a great man, for he had dared to set all upon one cast of the dice ; but in consequence of his greatness, " we must arm, for all the various questions that have been accumulat- ing for the last fifty years call for a solution, and I can see no solution that is possible save by war." He called on the Ministers present to declare whether, by means of the new law, France would be sufficiently armed to resist a coalition, and wound up by declaring that " the moment had arrived when all the vital forces of the country should be concen- trated, so as to restore to it that military vigour and that power of initiative (cette initiative) which, by occasionally striking terror throughout Europe, caused France to be re- spected." And the Senators on many benches are reported in the official Moniteur to have testified their lively adhesion to his views,—views which he himself summed up in the one ominous sentence, " The power of France must preponderate" in Europe. Let us recollect the explosion of pride in the Legislative Body which only two months ago forced M. Rouher to pledge the Emperor never to abandon Rome ; the heavy majority by which this Army Bill, so disliked by the peasantry, was carried ; the carelessness with which France has received a demand for a loan of twenty-five millions ; the immense expenditure on armaments going on unrebuked by Press or Parliament, and we may begin to understand how deeply M. de Brenier is in accord with the inner heart of France. The old demand, repeated in every generation from the days of Henri Quatre to the days of M. Rouher, " Excitement at home, or ascendancy abroad," is being repeated once more, and the Emperor is called upon by friends as well as enemies, by titled, and paid and de- corated servants, as well as by independent representatives, to make his final choice. It is not sufficient that the Emperor should render France secure from all attack, should raise her army to 1,200,000 men, should be impeding by his mere will the union of Northern and Southern Germany. France, says M. Thiers, representative of all bourgeois national sentiment, ought to be surrounded by dependent States. " Let us for once not be Poles, or Hungarians, or Italians, but French- men." "The history of nations," said Admiral Bouet Willaumez, representative of the Navy, "is the history of their armies," the sword must be resharpened. The Senate "gave him for ten minutes a perfect ovation." France, says Marshal Niel, representative of the Army, must have a movable force of 550,000 men, yet remain garrisoned. And that number, shrieks M. de Brenier, is not enough, for France must be ready to strike occasional terror, and in all France there is not a sign that the nation will repudiate his words.
The danger of these utterances, at once so provocative and so aggressive, is indefinitely increased by the present position of Continental affairs. It is a most unfortunate circumstance that just as France is burning to regain her self-respect by some visible proof of her military strength, an enterprise presents itself great enough to display her power, yet not so great as to involve, as a German war would involve, indefinite or excessive 'risks. An invasion of Italy, intended to end in the division of the Peninsula into three—Northern, Southern, and Papal Italy—would gratify the priesthood, would satisfy the wounded pride of France, would plant near France three almost dependent States, and would seem to be a revival rather than a formal betrayal of the Napoleonic ideas. The peace of Villafranca was the Emperor's work, and he has already shed blood in the field to prevent the com- pletion of Italian unification and to protect the Papacy, which is now intriguing in every direction not to resist, but to break up Italy. There is but too much reason to fear that such a project would be received with considerable favour in France ; ever since her alliance with Prussia a kind of detestation of Italy has grown up in French minds, a hatred as of one who has created a being likely to be too powerful for his control, a fear lest the South and the North, locking hands over the Alps, should finally prison her within her existing limits. Italy herself, with her Government discredited, her Treasury always in difficulties, her Southern Provinces honeycombed with intrigue, presents many anxieties to a ruler who either entertains or affects a permanent dread of revolutionary out- breaks. That the country itself would resist is certain, butFrance desires rather than fears an enemy; and men well acquainted with Neapolitan feeling affirm that the appearance of a French fleet before Naples would be the signal for a Bourbon and clerical explosion which would divert half the strength of Italy to repression. The French might not be driven out at once, and if not driven out at once, Italy, bankrupt and divided, would be compelled either to submit or to unfurl the red flag, and trust all to the resources sometimes developed by popular despair. She has little, if anything, to expect from alliances. Austria has no interest in protecting Victor Emanuel's posses- sion of Southern Italy. Russia, which has an interest of a kind, is too far off. Prussia, which has a strong interest, seems for the moment disinclined, by protecting her ally, to risk the alienation of Catholic feeling in Germany, or to engage in a war so vast for objects so indirect. England is not ready for such a conflict, even if she had a statesman at her head who would venture, with Ireland fermenting and Par- liament discredited, to appeal to the people in such a cause. Doubtless, if Italy could hold out long enough and well enough to make the issue doubtful, or if Napoleon pushed a policy of dictation into a policy of aggrandizement, Count von Bismarck might interfere ; but France in motion is fearfully rapid, and Napoleon could not in any case contemplate sub- jugation. He knows too well what Venetia cost the Haps- burgs.
These are the views which there is too much reason to fear a party within the Tuileries are pressing upon the Emperor, which are avowed by all clerical prints, and which have the sympathy, to say no more, of M. Thiers and those whose latent thought he always contrives to express, the war party of France. Fortunately, they have not yet prevailed with the Emperor, who is not a man to forget his attitude before the historians of the future ; but we fear they assist to induce him to press a despotic, or rather a Cmsarist policy upon Victor Emanuel. Many signs combine to prove that a coup d'e'tat is under consideration, more or less serious, and that the King is trying anxiously to effect some compromise with Rome. The inherent contempt of Napoleon for Parliaments has been intensified by the voluble laziness of the Italian Chamber, and if he spares Italy, it may be on condition of sterner and more repressive administration. For the present, doubtless, the Emperor will watch ; but a Bourbon movement, a street demonstration, a failure to pay the debt, anything which arouses France, may induce him to turn her new strength, to be perfected by April, against the easiest and most profitable foe. With Civita Vecchia in French hands, 550,000 Frenchmen ready for mobilization, her one ally hesitating, and her greatest province fermenting with mutually hostile opinions, Italy never had such need of steady and cautious steering, or, we may add, more to fear from the endless recriminations of the Florentine House of Commons.
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