TOPICS OF THE DAY.
M. THIERS'S MANIFESTO.
THIERS had, we imagine, a double reason for issuing .01 • his Manifesto of Sunday, the 24th May. It must have been infinitely pleasant to him, no doubt, on the anni- versary of his own fall, to explain to his friends and France and Europe how completely he had been in the right ; how impossible any Government except the Republic was ; how utterly his successors had failed to establish the Monarchy they desired. I, he says, was accused only of one thing, that I did not make the Monarchy. "The men who succeeded me succeeded to make the Monarchy, and have they made it ? They have had a whole year to prepare it and bestow it upon us." " They have had the material force "—Marshal Mac- Mahon having been ready to obey any decisive vote of the Assembly—" the authority of the Assembly ; power, and power somewhat roughly exercised." Have they re-established the Monarchy ? "No one, assuredly, would dare to say that they did not wish to do BO j and if, wishing it, they have not done it, it is apparently because they have not been able." Either they did not wish it, in which case why turn out me; or they were incompetent to effect their wishes, and then, also, why turn out me ? It must have been delightful to a man whose ability is only rivalled by his consciousness of its pos- session to forget Patmos for a moment, and utter those biting sentences, but it was not for his own gratification merely that the far-sighted statesman uttered them. M. Thiers per- ceives, we fear, with only too great clearness, the revival of the perennial difficulty of French politics, the difficulty which has unsettled her form of government for forty years, the difficulty of either breaking or bending the sovereign power without a coup d' etat. Charles N. was sovereign, and could neither be bent to the national will nor dismissed, and Revolution became inevitable. Louis Philippe was sovereign, and could neither be induced to widen the suffrage nor compelled to change his course without widening it, and again there was Revolution. The Provisional Government, the Presidential Republic, the Empire, were all alike sovereign for the hour, all failed in one way or the other to execute the national will, and as all were immovable, all one after another fell by violence, whether applied through the military or the mob. The Assembly of 1870 is now sovereign, and like its predecessors, is out of accord with the people, is unbending, and is perpetual, and the danger of its extinction by force is once more becoming great. It has proved itself incompetent, not only to evolve a great man or a Constitution, but even a decent Ministry, and for a week there has been no Ministry in France. Marshal MacMahon has at last formed a Ministry, it is true, but it is only a Ministry of clerks, more or less highly esteemed, and can no more venture to propose a policy, much less to found a new Constitution, than an English Ministry of Permanent Secretaries, which it most nearly resembles. Indeed, it has openly announced that it neither has nor will have a programme. Its head, General Cissey, is no politician, and will merely obey his orders ; its Chancellor of the Exchequer is a passe Buona- partist ; its Minister of Foreign Affairs is a separate person, who would probably, if left unfettered, declare for a Con- servative Republic, but who meanwhile attends to his own department only ; and its rank and file are men with reputations for giving no trouble. No such Ministry can found, still less induce a divided Assembly to found, any system of government at all. It is a mere stcp-gap, and will probably go down the first moment it attempts seriously to move. It cannot carry the Constitutional Laws, or any others like them ; and without such laws France is restless and un- easy, trade droops, and men's minds are excited by every kind of irrational hope or fear. Adjournments will not remove the difficulty, nor any elections allowed by law, nor any patched-up truces between the parties. Nothing can meet the necessity but a Dissolution, and unfortunately for France Dissolution is surrounded with most, if not quite all, the difficulties of Abdication. The Sovereign is a popular Assem- bly, but there exists no more legal power to compel the Assembly to dissolve than to compel the Sovereign to abdicate his throne. If it chooses to stay on it can legally stay on, and it is quite as likely that it will choose as that it will not. A large majority of its members dread a dissolution as a monarch dreads abdication. They know they will never come back, that for them life will become insipid, that for their cause, if they go, there will be no further hope. A Buonaparte may succeed them, or a Republic; but of a bourbon Restoration, with white flag or
tricolor, with a charter or with a constitution, with a Court of nobles and priests, or a Court of priests and tradesmen,
there will be no further hope. To all the bitterness of baffled policy will be added all the bitterness of humiliated pride. Scores of them will think that in dissolving they are false to their duty, which is to proclaim Henri Cinq and his flag ; and scorasimore will discern that they are neglecting their interest, which is to refound the bourgeois monarchy. It is quite possible that they may resolve to stay, and that the Marshal-President, unable to endure their presence, and still less able to endure their absence—for even Napoleon never claimed power to impose new taxes—may act on the thought attributed to him by a. correspondent of the Telegraph—who professes to give the substance of the President's own words—and either dissolve by the right of the sabre, or use military force to compel a voluntary dissolution. The Constitutional expedient, to offer the Assembly the alternative of dissolving or superseding him, is scarcely open to the Marshal, who knows that in despair they might accept his resignation and replace him by the Duke d'Aumale. Either of the more violent courses would recommence the sterile round of military coups cr e'tat, and add a new Pretender to the crowd now claiming power in France. In the event of a direct assertion of force, the- Marshal must, we imagine, propose himself, for his Sep- tennat is, as he now conceives, essential to the restora- tion of order, and to that restoration of military power which, in his judgment, is necessary to make government strong ; while forcible dissolution would leave the Assembly itself the only legitimate Legislature in France. Its suc- cessor's title would be far inferior to its own. The continuity of authority would once more be broken, and the new Govern- ment, whatever its claims, even if it were that of the Comte de Chambord, would owe its existence to Revolution.
It is at this point that M. Thiers steps in, and the rest of his Manifesto is a powerfully-reasoned appeal to the Assembly to dissolve itself of its own accord. He does not blame the Assembly, " which representing our own divisions, has the greatest difficulty in constituting a stable and homogeneous majority," but points out that although the country left its duration to its own reason, loyalty, and delicacy, still " reason imposes conditions on every deliberative Assembly," and " when it can govern no longer, it has no longer the right to attempt to govern. Dissolution will do it honour in the eyes of the nation," and the " longer it waits, the less moderate and pru- dent the future elections will be." That words like these will influence the majority which only a year ago dismissed M.. Thiers out of mere suspicion that he might use them, we can- not venture to hope, but they will undoubtedly be influential in France, and after all, it is only in France that the fiercest Legitimist desires to pass his life. Anything is pleasanter for him than a quarrel a outrance with his neighbours, and he may find, if he holds out too long, his neighbours growing fierce. Nor will his appreciation of M. Thiers's advice be greatly diminished by the result of Sunday's election in the- Nievre. For the first time since Sedan, an open, honest,. avowed Buonapartist, M. de Bourgoing, who started as an Imperialist of the purest water, who, when returned, thanked his electors for their attachment to the Empire, and who as• Deputy at once proceeded to Chislehurst, has beaten the Republi- cans by a heavy vote, 37,500 to 32,100. All kinds of rumours are- circulated as to the cause of this change, for the Nii3vre was strongly Republican, bnt its reason would seem to be suffi- ciently patent. The people are weary of waiting for a final settlement, and think if they are to have the Napoleonic system, with all its repressions, and all its clerical tendencies, and all its personal ambitions, they may as well have the Napoleons with their historic fascinations too. They would prefer the Republic, but if that is not attainable, then some pestle must be found to bray this Assembly in a mortar, and they take the heaviest they can see. It is the game of the Buonapartes which M. de Broglie has unconsciously played all through, and here is a symptom of the result which even Legitimists may understand. If they prefer a Cmsarism with an unknown Caesar to a Conservative Republic, they have only to refuse to dissolve, and in three years they will find an Emperor, by the will of God and the factions, quite ready to send them all to Cayenne. They never had such a moment for yielding and testing their assertion that the country is with them, for the Marshal can maintain social order, there will be no interference with the ballot, and the elections may take place without their risking that mob vengeance of which they are always in secret dread. At all events, if they will not, if they cannot understand either the
its last logical extreme, if they will, in fact, be sovereign after the Bourbon fashion, let them at least acknowledge that they are but preparing a restoration for the Empire. They, and only they, are pampering the unknown lad at Woolwich into a Dauphin of France. The Republic will be better for them, at any rate, more especially while its representative is a man who ---qa think as M. Gambetta spoke over the grave of Count D'Alton Shee. The ex-Dictator, who is supposed in this country to be such a raging democrat, but who is more hated by Communists than M. Rouher, had the courage to bid his party welcome every aristocrat who would join them, and adjure them to learn from him that "Athenian " tone, the tone of culture and manner and honour which, he hoped—the Italian side of his head, one would think, for once getting the mastery —would be the tone of the Republic of the future. There never was a more adroit speech made, and Legitimists who read it may well ask themselves whether such a Republic would be for them, for their children, for their careers, worse than the rude military government they set up a year ago under the name of the Septennat.
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