THE FRENCH CONSERVATIVES.
IT takes a great deal to convert the Monarchical party in France to the conviction that the Republic is really esta- blished, and that their Conservative ideas must be recoined into a Republican form before they can have a chance of wide cur- rency. But we think they are gradually coming round to that salutary conviction, slow as their progress is. M. Buffet, in spite of the reluctance which he has shown to appeal to France for a new Assembly, has not only recalled an Admiral who had stated publicly that he should serve Marshal MacMahon only so long as his policy continued what he thought Conser- vative, but has just declared in a speech at Mirecourt that he and his colleagues in the Cabinet have never had any difference for a single day on a question of policy. This assurance may prove, and does prove, that such genuine Re- publicans as M. Dufaure, must be, in some respects, Conserva- tive up to a measure of Toryism which in this country we should hardly find except among the mute eccentrics of the House of Lords; but it will reassure France, dis- turbed as the country has often been by supposed signs of M. Buffet's leaning to Imperialism, that his sturdy Republican colleagues, with far better opportuni- ties of finding it than ordinary observers, do not discover any symptom of this leaning. Indeed, M. Buffet's speech may itself give us the key to what has seemed most ambiguous in his action. He tells us that he has regarded it as the mission of his Government to take its stand on the Constitu- tional laws to which all owe respect and obedience, and from that platform to demonstrate that the passing of these laws did not in any measure imply "the surrender of a frankly Conservative policy, nor even the adoption of a policy which, without being itself revolutionary, would pave the way for such a policy, and act, indeed, as a policy of preparation and transition towards it." " To serve as a transition between that which one holds to be good and that which one holds to be bad is the most deplorable of parts to play, and is also the most melancholy." Such are M. Buffet's views of the mission of his Cabinet. And these being his views, it is not, perhaps, surprising that he has occasionally treated cliques and parties which, though not constitutional, were in some sense highly Conservative, more tenderly than other cliques and parties which, though strictly constitutional, were not, in his opinion, Conservative at all. He avers that it has been his main object to reunite all the Conservative forces in France which through former revolutions have unhappily been broken to pieces, and to bring together into the same camp "men who in reality pursue the same end, but who unfortu- nately have accustomed themselves to pursue it by different roads." If this were M. Buffet's object, of course he would naturally yearn after true Conservatives, whether they called themselves Imperialists, Bourbonists, or Orleanists, far more than he would yearn after Republicans of any shade who could by possibility be regarded as Liberals. It would not be disloyalty to the new Constitution, for instance, but fear of the Radicals, which made him delay the elections till he thought there was more chance of gaining a Conservative majority. And it would not be a secret bias to the Bonapart- ists, but a secret hope that, if leniently treated, Bonapartists might swell the party of highly Conservative Republicans, which induced him to pass over words of disloyalty to the Constitution, coming from Bonapartist organs which clamoured for a more Conservative Constitution, though he would not pass over similar words of disloyalty when they came from Radical organs which clamoured for a less Conservative Constitution. M. Buffet, in fact, declares his loyalty to the Constitutional Laws, but declares his intention to get all the Conservatism out of them he possibly can, and to do all in his power to reconcile all true Conservatives, whatever form of government they may have wished for in the past, to those laws. To get as many Conservatives as possible to act together under the Constitutional Laws, what- ever besides Conservatives they may once have been,—that is M. Buffet's programme. For that purpose, however, the Con- stitutional Laws must be accepted and must be put into opera- tion, even to the critical duty of soon dissolving the Assembly, and arrQre-pensies as to what may come out of them in 1880 must be suppressed. Now, we cannot wonder that all true Liberals in France are discontented with this policy. But considering
that it must issue in an early appeal to the country, the results of which will, in all probability, greatly modify the pro- gramme, we think they are quite right in suppressing their discontent, and accepting with satisfaction M. Biiffet's assur- ances that he and all his colleagues take their firm stand on the Constitutional Laws, and will attempt nothing on any other basis.
The drift of M. de Broglie's great speech at Beaumesnil, in the Eure, comes to much the same as M. Buffet's, except that on the one hand he goes out of his way to speak of M. Thiers with respect, and of the necessity of breaking with his policy with regret, and on the other, he refers to the failure of the Monarchists with sorrow, even while he invites them to keep their hopes for the future in abeyance up to the time when the Constitution provides a proper occasion for hope. It is clear from M. de Broglie's speech, as it is also clear from the line taken by the Orleanists in relation to the allegation that the Orleanist Princes had positively accepted the Republic, that, for the present at least, the Monarchists are agreed to keep their wishes to themselves, and not to agitate the Constitu- tional question again till 1880, unless a very great revolution in the circumstances of France should make it obviously feasible and prudent to obtain from the Marshal, who alone under the Constitution has the power to reopen the matter before that date, a request to the next Assembly to reconsider the form of the State organisation. The Orleanist journal gives out not only that the Orleanists do not wish for any reconsideration of the question till 1880, but that they are even opposed to any attempt by the Marshal to reopen it. And M. de Broglie, while not attempting to conceal the " hopes " with which he shall approach the limit fixed by the Assembly for recon- sideration, if reconsideration is then desired, when of course it will be possible to make another Monarchical effort, is very anxious to impress on all his supporters that in the meantime he considers the guarantees for a Conservative policy in France not insufficient, and that he is anxious to confine the efforts of his friends to the legitimate enforcement of those guarantees, and to edge away from all distinctively Monarchical alliances. He does not think the new Constitution as good as the one he would have advocated. There are melancholy shortcomings in it, here and there. Still, it is neither revolutionary, nor, as M. Buffet says, a mere bridge to a more revolutionary Consti- tution; and therefore the Duo de Broglie wishes to make Con- servatism the key-note of the party to which he belongsi as distinguished from any sort of constitutional project.
The one point in these speeches to which a Liberal must take exception, is not the evident identification of Conserva- tism with patriotism, and the disposition to treat anything like- Liberalism as a sort of impiety and treason against France,— for that tendency has been the characteristic of Toryism in all countries and all times,—but rather the tone as if Liberalism were hardly an admissible creed for any French Government under the present Constitution, as if it were the function of Marshal MacMahon, as President of the Republic, to drive out Liberalism, and refuse it all official recognition, even if it were to obtain a Parliamentary majority. Indeed, the way in which Marshal MacMahon's Conservatism is talked of, suggests rather- the function of a political Bishop pledged to drive away heresy, than the function of the chief of a Constitutional State who is bound to accept any responsible Government which commands the confidence of the Parliament with which he acts. Thus Marshal MacMahon is called by the Due de Broglie " the soldier of legal order and of Conservative principles." But does legal order under the new Constitution imply Conservative principles ?' Is there anything in that Constitution to prevent the most earnest Liberal from be- coming the adviser of the President ? Clearly not, and the way in which it is attempted to commit Marshal MacMahon, as President, to the views of a party, seems to us thoroughly unconstitutional. Nevertheless, these Conservative speeches are satisfactory in their way. ft is very satisfactory to have a policy of Conservatism recommended which is to lean as much on Conservative Republicans as on Conservative schemers for a throne. The effect of that must be to make a good deal of the Radicalism of France lees angry and bitter, and a good deal of the Conservatism of France less reactionary. Conser- vatives who have given up, for the time at least, all hostility to Republicans, will gradually drop into Republicans, unless their old dreams are revived by new events. Radicals who find it no longer necessary to denounce conspiracies against the Republic, will find it much easier to show the moderate side of their own minds, and so will excite less aversion in their foes. On the whole, the official and the unofficial speeches of the last week show that a new step has been gained for a moderate Republic.
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