THE ROYALIST PLOT IN FRANCE.
IT is not at all probable that the Royalist plot disclosed on Monday in the speech of the Procureur-General before the Senate is either got up or exaggerated by the Government. The interest of the present Administration is to let the Royalists alone, for they have at least the sympathy of the " Ralli6s," whom the Ministry do not wish to provoke into irreconcilable opposition. M. Waldeck-Roussean now needs the support of every man who prefers civil government to the rule of the sword. We may therefore, we think, rely upon the bona, fides of the Procureur-Gkeral, and certainly the tale he told on Monday was a sufficientprinid-facie justification of the trial. Unless he has invented all his facts and forged many documents—and he is not a subordinate of the General Staff—the Royalists of France, headed by the Duke whom they consider their King, had formed an alliance with the chiefs of many revolutionary parties, with M. Deroulede and his League of Patriots, with M. Guerin and his Anti-Semitic forces—very formidable because of their numbers, and because, as the Procureur- General shows, they do not stick at murder—with a League of the Golden Youth all eager for battle, with a great " personality " who thinks he can dispose of the Labour party, and, we imagine, with some General who is carefully kept out of the trial, for the immediate and forcible overthrow of the Republic. Constant agitation was to be kept up till Paris was thrown into the necessary excite- ment, then on a day which was three times changed, the most dangerous being the day of M. Loubet's election, twen ty thou- sand roughs were to appear in the streets, an insurrection was to begin in Paris and in Caen, the Jewish Prefect of the Seine Inferieure was to be assassinated—this is specially ordered by an Anti-Semite leader in writing—and the Duke of Orleans was to be proclaimed King, and to make his entry into his capital amidst universal plaudits. The plot failed for three reasons,—the roughs did not appear in sufficient numbers, the twenty thousand men shrinking away to two thousand ; the gendarmerie and police were loyal—this is mentioned in a tone of disappointment—and the Duke of Orleans, though urgently and repeatedly entreated, never arrived upon the frontier. He even kept ostentatiously away. He probably distrusted his followers, to whom, it would seem, he had advanced no money of his own, though he had ordered his wealthy devotees to ex- pend some £20,000 ; or he dreaded imprisonment ; or, at all events, he was never close at hand. In fact, he acted as a descendant of Egalite, and not as a descendant of Henri Quatre, and his slackness dispirited the best of his followers, who again, instead of concentrating all efforts on Paris and its garrison, occupied themselves with local organisations, useless if the central movement failed, need- less if it succeeded. The explosions of " popular " wrath, which were really arranged, and on three occasions did actually begin, all fizzled out. Somebody or other gave or sold to the Government accurate and minute informs- y tion, all the leaders except the Duke of Orleans and M. Guerin were arrested, heaps of documents were seized, one more compromising than another, and the con- spirators, who expected to be masters of France, and who had drawn up written lists disposing of all offices, were sent in a batch to be tried by the Senate, which is not likely to be lenient. When the Procurenr- General sat down the Government case was, in fact, so far proved that all men who heard him acknowledged the prosecution to be inevitable, and the Royalists to have been engaged in a real and dangerous plot against the State.
The trial will reveal, we believe, an extraordinary number of treacheries, and a readiness to take bribes which will astound even students of the recent history of France ; but it hardly matters how it goes, so far as the hopes of the Royalists are concerned. Those hopes are over for a generation. Their party has always had against them one impalpable but powerful force,—the belief of the peasantry that Royalism spells reaction against the Revolution, the loss of all they have gained, the domina- tion of nobles and clerics, and possibly a restoration of tithes and feudal dues. The peasantry remember the White Terror as well as the Red, and the Duke of Orleans loses as well as gains by being head of the house of Bourbon. The Royalists have, however, in their favour three sources of power,—the adhesion, more or less resolute, of all clerically minded officers, who are numerous though far from a majority ; the concealed favour of the Church, which would accept King, Emperor, or Dictator if only it might be rid of the Republic ; and a senti- ment, the feeling that France needs a chief to revindicate her position, and might find one in a chivalric and worthy King, who, if sprung from the ancient house, would recement her history. Tbist last force, in reality the strongest of all, disappears under the revelations of the Procureur-General, which, whatever else they indicate, show beyond question that the Orleaniat party is as unromantic as it has always been, that it is ready to ally itself with men whom Louis XIV. would have sent to the Bastille, and with parties whose very existence is an affront to the ideas alike of Church and throne. Its chiefs embrace Esterhazv, who by his own confession wrote the bonlereau ; or Guerin, who was a tripe-seller, and is a leader of Anti-Semites ; or the chief of the Labour party, " the personality " who sells his fac- tion ; or Dubuc, who writes to an accomplice ordering a murder. "Try," he says, "to recruit the needed force, so that at a given signal you can rush upon the Prefecture and hoist the Bleuet flag. At this Prefecture you know what ignoble little youpin, [a scornful French word to designate the Jew] you will have to brain with your clubs." Louis XVI. was a weak man, and he accepted the aid of Mirabeau, but at least Mirabeau was a noble, a statesman, and a great power in France. The French Royalist party has now a King who, though we reject the charge of cowardice as impossible, is certainly as prudent as a French tradesman, and manages his affairs just like one; and leaders like Andre Buffet, who send messages of the highest importance by telegraph, who believe in cyphers as if the Stone of Rosetta had never been read off, and who conduct grave plots with so much writing that when they are betrayed they seem, as their letters are read in Court, almost to have confessed. There must be many men of great ability and high character among the Royalists of France, but judging them by the conduct of their active agents in this plot we should declare them inferior in audacity, in craft, and in capacity to any band of coiners. The one man of action in their ranks is wasted in defending against policemen a house in a slum which, but for some inexplicable weakness at the Prefecture of Police, would have been carried in two hours. The moment it was understood that force would be used M. Guerin and his accomplices, hungry, disgusted, and squalid, surrendered without firing a shot, and, with the exception of their leader, were suffered contemptuously to go home. That gives the final touch of ridicule to a business which, we believe, finally rids the Bonapartes of their Royalist competitors. They themselves have not shown much capacity or energy of late years, but at least they are aware that they must win regiments and not mobs, and employ hot-brained gentlemen as their agents, not men who, while organising revolution, direct their personal enemies to be beaten to death with clubs. We do not hold with some of our contemporaries that the history of this Royalist plot should deepen the contempt for Frenchmen produced by the Dreyfus case, but certainly it does little to remove it. Royalism, to be respected, should be chivalric, self-sacrificing, and generous, not calculating, vulgar, and mean. We can understand a party which despises escutcheons, but if one is proud of them, and parades them in proof of descent, one should not bedaub them with dirt.
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