TOPICS OF THE DAY.
M. TRIERS AND HIS POLICY.
"IVVE must not allow our dislike for M. Thiers' pseudo- Republic, a Republic maintained by the bayonet and subjected to a dictatorship, to blind us to the ability of many sorts which he is unquestionably displaying. There is power in M. Thiers of a kind, the power of a man who though old is very full of life, devoid of small scruples, not to say big ones, experienced in affairs, and certain that when he is first, everybody else is in his place. Supposing his object to be the establishment of his own power for the present as the best obtainable interregnum, he certainly succeeds in the teeth of the most serious obstacles. Paris was nearly as strong as France, and he has conquered Paris. He has, though a civilian, contrived to obtain such a hold over the Army that he can venture to review it in large masses. He has, though a renegade from monarchy, induced a Monar- chical Assembly to prefer him; for the present at all events, to a throne, and this even though his dictatorship is avowedly intended to increase the chances of the detested Republic. He has, though an enemy of the Reds, induced M. Gambetta, the one Red chief who is competent to govern, to adhere to the system of which he is the head. He has ob- tained such a hold on opinion in France, that it is believed of 120 new members 90 will have for creed the name of M. Thiers, and has so restored public confidence that the largest single loan of this century of loans has been raised in France in a single day. After making all deductions, the raising of this loan has been a very noteworthy operation. The terms, it is true, are very high, nearly 7 per cent, ; but high terms were needed, and the con- ditions have been so arranged that, supposing France one day to be trusted, as India for example is trusted, the weight of the burden may be diminished one-third. Then it is true that we probably know very little of the resources of very great States, that we under-estimate excessively the profits annually made by six or seven millions of households, all working hard with a view to profit, and are ignorant of the true proportion between any loan and the annual savings of the people who subscribe it ; but still, to raise £80,000,000 at once was a bold experiment, and it has succeeded.• That may not be a proof of M. Thiers' wisdom, but it is certainly a proof of the confidence entertained in his rule, and to have inspired that confidence is a very remarkable achievement. A Frenchman with money is not a trustful being, and to get money from him in vast quantities, for payment to an enemy and just after a scarcely suppressed civil war, argues great capacity of some kind. We suppose the truth to be that the French people, taught for three generations to believe that Paris was the danger of France, think that now Paris is subju- gated the danger is over, but something must be allowed also to M. Thiers himself. He can strike hard, and that may be sufficient for the peasantry, but he can also speak well, and it is clear that his speech on finance, with its bold optimism, and predictions of returning fortune, and covert promises of revindication, exactly suited the small capitalists. We cannot share his confidence in the future, but it is probably sincere—for is not M. Thiers ruling I—and it has certainly exercised a most inspiriting influence on the tone of the French mind, which needs in civil, as in military life, the exhilaration of mental champagne.
Nor are we quite so certain as some of our contemporaries about the effect, and especially the political effect, of all M. Thiers' new revenue proposals. One of them at least we sus- pect to be sound. It is easy to say that increased duties on liquors will induce a decrease of consumption, and so they will, if pushed too far; but it is not so easy to draw the line, to say at what point selfish enjoyment will begin to be restrained. French Governments, it must be remembered, are not hampered by some English difficulties. Owing to the want of coherence among the people—who indulge in secret denunciations to a frightful extent—to the number and organization of the police, and to the practice of domiciliary visits, illicit distillation of spirits is very difficult in France, while the illicit manufacture of wine is next to an impossibility. You cannot make wine in a tea-kettle. The only obstacles the Government has to fear in taxing liquor are the poverty of the people or their resolu- tion not to drink, and neither may be sufficient to overcome the attraction of their favourite means of excitement, means, we fear, becoming only more and more popular as the hysteric tendency in French society develops itself under the pressure
of endless revolutions. Certainly the increase in the octrois under the Empire has not checked the consumption of liquor. Nearly the same argument applies to the increaeedduty on sugar, while, as to the new tax on transfers,the total, cruelly heavy as it is, is probably not more than equivalent to lawyers' charges in England for the transfer of small parcels of land. The State in France has, by scientific arrangements, dispensed with con- veyancers' fees, and may safely take—we do not say wisely take—some portion of the waste it has prevented. It is a blundering and unjust mode of taxing, but neither a ruinous nor an impossible one. For the buyer it is self-adjusted, as he buys at his own discretion ; and for the seller it is covered. over and over again by the rise in the value of land of late, years. The protective duties are utterly bad economically, but politically M. Thiers had to consider that the alternative,. an income-tax, could not be applied to personalty alone with-• out breach of faith with the fundholder,. and that if extended.' to land it would have to be applied to five millions of peasants, who can destroy any Government, and whose whole scheme of life and idea of success rest upon the careful concealment of their incomes. Before everything they want to save silently, publicity meaning with them more taxes, more family claims,. and more chances of being robbed. Granting conditions which he doubtless deemed inexorable, the necessity of raising 20 per cent. more revenue without throwing the peasantry into the arms of the Bonapartes, M. Thiers' proposals are entitled at least to the merit of cleverness. His idea clearly is to meet the immediate emergency without thinking too much of the. future ; and he has met it, that is to say, he will pay out the Germans within three years or two years, will compensate- French sufferers, and will rebuild Paris, at the cost of a great reduction in the commercial prosperity of France, the causes of which will scarcely be visible to her people, and the extent of which will be less than the addition to her prosperity made under the Empire. There is no wisdom in that, it may be ; but there is cleverness, for France, be it remembered,. has not to contend with our first economic difficulty. Her- population does not increase.
Again, the refusal to reduce the military or naval expendi- ture, unwise as it appears to Englishmen, has some justifica- tions. The clear duty of Frenchmen is to release the country- men torn away from them without their own consent, or at. least to obtain such a position that their consent must be asked,—that is a duty at least as clear as that of Italy to release Venetia if she could, a duty all England admitted.. And apart altogether from that, there is undoubted need for a strong army in France. Order is for the hour her necessity, and though we hold it detestable that the policy of repression,. not unnatural in a monarchy, should be kept up under the fiction of a Republic, we do not deny that a policy of repres- sion is for some time inevitable. The cities and the provinces. will be at each other's throats else. What we desire to know now is-not whether M. Thiers is keeping an army, for he can- not help himself, but whether he is trying to make that army• a good one, or only trying to make it devoted to his regime by compliances inconsistent with its own good or that of the. country. The accounts upon that point, though meagre, are not very reassuring. It is said that discipline is somewhat better since the capture of Paris ; it is certain that the supply departments are better organized ; and it is probable that the Generals do not control M. Thiers as much as they did' Napoleon. But, on the other hand, M. Thiers avoids, and it is believed dislikes anything like radical reorganization ; he• flatters the troops excessively, and he passed over some inci- dents before the walls of Paris which indicated that the men were not thoroughly in hand. His cleverness, which in civil affairs is producing good, if temporary results, appears as regards military affairs to be directed mainly towards appear- ances ; and if this is the case, it is at this point that danger will arise to his scheme. Speeches will raise loans, but they will not make an Army ; and the optimism which ex- hilarates a people like the French, makes an imperfect Army consider itself a match both for the world and the people.
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