THE ORLEANS MANIFESTO.
THE Manifesto issued by the Comte de Paris on his expulsion from France, indicates with curious precision the kind of mistake into which M. de Freycinet and his col-
leagues have allowed themselves to fall. They have not only sanctioned a great oppression—for even if there is an excuse for banishing the elder Princes, the law depriving the younger ones of their civil rights is a direct denial of justice—but they have committed a grave blunder in statecraft. They have solidified a fluid Opposition. By the common consent of the Ministry, of the Radical leaders, and of all who spoke in the debate, the one formidable Prince is the Comte de Paris, the head of the family of France, the eldest descendant in the male line of the founder of the Monarchy. It is to him that the Monarchists are looking. It is towards him that Conservative electors are gravitating. It is to expel him that the old practice of proscription has been revived. With cynical injustice, of which they are half ashamed, the Republicans have included Prince Napoleon and his son in their decree of banishment ; but it was only to seem logical in their own eyes. Neither of those persons are even supposed to be formidable. The father, though one of the ablest men in France, never had any chance of popularity ; and the son, under bad advice, has contrived to affront beyond forgiveness that sentiment of filial piety which in France has survived not only the Revolution, but the loss of all other faiths. Nobody would have dreamed of expelling them but for the popularity of the Comte de Paris, who was followed to his steamer at Tr6port by weeping crowds, and who, by a strange turn of fortune, has been pointed out to all France as the one possible Monarch. The Count, who is not without his ambitions, and whose position in his own eyes was radically changed by the death of the Comte de Chambord—whom, it should be remem- bered, he had formally acknowledged—has grasped the oppor- tunity. Up to the date of his expulsion, he had been living in France as a wealthy but unpresuming citizen, making no claim to rule, submitting to all laws, and liable, if he sanctioned or assisted in any conspiracy, to be tried like any other citizen for treason. He has, however, been placed by the Chamber outside the law, and being thereby liberated from the law, he announces publicly that he has ceased to be a citizen, and awaits the national recognition of his right to be King of France. "I am," he says," head of the glorious family which has directed France during nine centuries in the work of national unity, and which, associated with the people in good and bad fortune, has made its greatness and its prosperity Taught by experience, France will not be mistaken, either as to the cause or as to the authors of the evils under which she suffers. She will recognise that the Monarchy, traditional in its principle and modern in its institutions, can alone supply a remedy for them. It is only this traditional Monarchy, of which I am the representative, that can reduce to impotence those men of dis- order who menace the peace of the country, can ensure political and religions liberty, revive authority, and restore the public fortunes. It only can give to our democratic society a strong government, one open to all, superior to parties, one whose stability will be for Europe a pledge of enduring peace. My duty is to labour incessantly at this work of salvation. With the help of God and of all those who share my faith in the future, I shall accomplish it. The Republic is afraid. In striking at me, it gives me prominence. I have confidence in France. At the decisive hour I shall be ready.—ParraPPE, Comte de Paris." There is no mistaking the meaning of sentences like those. The Republic has by its own act, and under the pressure of no necessity, transformed a wealthy citizen with a grand pedigree into a formidable Pretender to the throne. We say "formidable," because in France a Prince who is the only possible alternative to the Republic, who cannot be reached by Republicans, and who cannot be declared unworthy to reign, is necessarily formidable. The whole history of modern France shows that her people, alike by their virtues and their vices, are indisposed towards obscure dictators, that the only choice in their minds lies between the Republic, the representative of a dynasty, or a man of genius. There is no man of genius, no one who could even pretend to rule by right of successful service, and though there are two dynasties, one of them is for the moment out of the competition. The only choice lies between the Republic and Philip VII., and Philip VII. is therefore a formidable power. Those Frenchmen who are discontented with the Republic for any reason must look to him. If the peasantry weary of taxes, if the Army grows impatient of continued ill-success, if the people, above all, become alarmed either by a failure abroad or the spread of the Socialist idea at home, it is in the old Monarchy that they must seek a refuge. They have no other course to pursue, and they perceive the fact so distinctly that, though the immense majority of Frenchmen were till recently Republicans, in the last election, on October 4th, 1885, three and a half millions of votes, out of a total of seven millions, were thrown for Monarchists, all of whom, as against the Republic, would accept the heir of the ancient line. Let that number become through any cause—a defeat, a blunder, a new tax—a majority, and the Chamber has so arranged affairs, that it has only to summon the King. It is true he is in exile ; but what differ- ence does that make ; or, rather, is not the difference in his favour, inasmuch as he is beyond arrest, has ceased to excite the morbid social envy which has banished him, and is beyond the range of that social microscope through which Frenchmen examine the faults of all who presume to be great ? A resident Pretender appeals to the eye, an exile to the imagination ; and with the millions, it is the imagina- tion which is strong. The Comte de Paris may never reach the throne, but his chance as an exile in England is far better than his chance as a great noble living in Normandy or Paris. An exile, said M. Maroon in the debate, "is, as I know from experience, soon forgotten ;" but the acrid sentence, too true when uttered of men of genius or of service, is not true of exiles whose claim rests on their birth. How many Englishmen knew Charles Stuart when he was called from Holland, or how many Spaniards had ever seen King Alfonso's face when he mounted the throne ? The fate of the Republic depends upon events about which it is vain to speculate; perhaps upon men now sitting unknown and obscure in corners of Paris. But if its fate is disastrous, one reason of its fall will have been that a majority of representatives unconvinced in their own minds, and of Ministers careless of justice so that they might keep their places, suddenly reminded all Frenchmen, by a great act of oppression, that they had among them a personage who, if they desired a Monarchy, was the inevitable King. A greater act of folly was never committed by men at the head of a great State.
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