The Sun.
London, England, 1868-12-23 00:00:00

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LOLVDON, WEDNESDAY, DEC. 23, 1868.

M. ROUHER has more securely than ever the iball
at his feet. He is rid of M. PINARD, and he is rid of
M. de MOUSTIER. He is still Minister of State—
equivalent to our First Lord of the Treasury and
President of the Council rolled into one. And,
while still, thus, actually himself Minister of State, he
is now virtually also Minister of the Interior and
Minister of Foreign Affairs, the former through M.
FORCADE DE LA ROQUETTE, the latter through his (i.e.
M. ROUHER'S) connection by marriage with M. LAVA-
LETTE. Hitherto, it is true, the great Minister's
counsels have been in the ascendant, but they have
been so in spite of more or less of an antagonism to
his policy, an antagonism manifested at home by t.
PINARD, and abroad by M. DE MOUSTIER. Relieved
of that antagonism by the removal of those two ad-
ministrators, it is very generally believed that M.
ROUHER will now have, if not full swing, at any
rate very much more of his own way in the direction
of the Imperial Government. Since the fasces
of the Republican PRESIDENT became transformed
irto the sceptre of the Second Empire, NAPOLEON
111. has never had so able or so eloquent a Minister
of State at his right hand as EL/GENE ROUHER, now
for more than five years occupant of that high and
most responsible position. It was in the October of
1863 that M. ROUHER was first appointed Minister of

State—upon the demise of M. BILLAULT. He has held
his own, there, ever since uninterruptedly. His in-
fluence is greater at this moment than it has ever
been. His capacities at the same time are now at their
highest. He is a match both as an orator and as a
debater for the most gifted chiefs of the Opposition.
His harangues, whenever he ascends the tribune, are
listened to as eagerly as those of M. THIERB himself.
He is never at a loss under attacks the most un-
looked for. He is always prepared, no matter
how sudden the emergency. And his words, though
weighty, and no doubt spoken after the utmost
possible deliberation, have more of the fire of an
assailant than of a defender of the Government.
He, more vigorously tban any other man upon either
aide of the assembly, can carry the assault into the
enemy's camp. At these moments his look, tone,
and manner have an air of audacity. And in-
terruption, instead of repressing his ardour,
inspirits him. At such times there is no more
impassioned orator in the Assembly than the Mini-
ster who is the vindicator of the acts and of the
policy of the EMPEROR'S Government. M. ROUHER
is now fifty-five years of age—just four years younger
than Mr. GLADSTONE. Originally a member of the
French Bar, and practising in his profession
at Riom, he first entered the Constituent
Assembly in 1848—shortly after the Revolution
of February, taking his seat there as representative
of the Department of the Puy-de-Dome. The very
next year his Ministerial rank commenced, namely,
on the 31st of October, 1849, when be was appointed
Minister of Justice by the Prince-President. That
office, in July of 1851, he resigned. But at the time
of the coup d'e'tat he was reinstalled as Minister
of Justice, only however, as it happened, un-
til his nomination, a short time afterwards,
to the post of Vice-President of the Council

of State. Subsequently he was appointed Minister
of Agriculture; of Commerce, and of Public works, in
which capacity he had the responsibility of negotiat-
ing with Mr. COBDEN the Treaty of Commerce signed
in 1860 between the Plenipotentiaries of France and
England—M. ROUIIER being the French Plenipoten-
tiary, Mr. COBDEN the English Plenipotentiary. As
before remarked, it was upon the death of M.
BILLAULT that M. ROUIIER succeeded, in October
1863, to that supreme post of Minister of State which,
with a firm grasp, he.has held ever since, which he
has directed all the while with a bold and resolute
will, and which at every emergency—that is to say,
upon every occasion when the policy of his imperial
master has been assailed—he has defended and vin-
dicated with a tongue of splendid and audacious
eloquence that has often won for him the reluctant
admiration of his foes. It is somewhat remarkable
now that his position is seemingly more than
ever firmly assured to him—that the outgoing
Minister of the Interior, M. PINARD—but yesterday
one of the most unpopular men in France— is to-day
being covered with the eulogiums of the French
journalists, who but just now were most certainly his
depreciators, if not actually his vituperators. Here
is December not yet run out, and yet the very Minis-
ter who was derided for the demonstrations of
the 3d instant, is being followed by panegyrics
at the moment of his quitting his post in
the Government. M. PINARD, there is n2:doubt of
it, has captivated those who were so recently his
noisiest and most scornful assailants, by the simple
but very conspicuous, and certainly very exceptional,
self-abnegation with which he has bowed to the EM-
PEROR'S decree removing him from the Government.
Whether actuated by resentment or influenced by
the loftier impulses of civicism, he is known within the
last few days to have declined the proffered rank of
Senator, and to have refused in like manner the yet
more tempting offer—to a man of high legal
attainments like himself —of a distinguished
judicial position in the Court of Cessa-
tion. The mustering of horse, foot, and artillery,
in the streets of Paris on the 3d of December, has,
upon the instant, been forgotten—in the admiration
excited by this unprecedented disdain by M. PINARD
for the temptations of his own personal advance-
ment. M. DE MOUSTIER, the other outgoing admi-
nistrator, still occupies the official residence
of the Minister for Foreign Affairs, but he does so
simply by reason of the alarming illness which was
sufficient of itself to account for the nomination of
M. de LAvALETTE as his successor. Whatever
else may be signified by the Ministerial changes
which have taken place so very recently at Paris, the
upshot of them is clearly and distinctly this—that
the influence of M. ROUIIER is more than ever domi-
nant in the councils of the EIIPIROR.

THE arrival of the full text of Mr. ANDREW
JOHNSON'S last Message to Congress fully dissipates
the surprise that was generally felt at the refusal of
the Senate to hear it read. It would have been
better if the -Upper House of the American Legis-
lature had followed the example of the Lower, and
silently accorded a decent interment to the last
manifesto of Mr. JOHNSON'S obsolete policy. But
though the course adopted was extreme, it was
neither surprising nor unwarranted. The retiring
PRESIDENT would have best upheld the dignity of his
position by a Message that as much as possible
omitted all recommendations which Mr. JOHNSON
will never more have power to uphold, save as a
private individual. Instead, however, of the silence