The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-02-20


fallible, and that the destiny Of France cannot
safely be reposed in his unassisted hands. SO
far as we can Judge from the synopsis which
alone we yet have of the imperial speech of
Friday last, Napoleon I'll has had the courage
and good sense to accept the impression thus
made upon France, and to make it the occasion
for throwing the imperial system more widely
open to the judgment and the action of public
opinion.
He recapitulates the main results of his
policy during the past year. states both what
has actually been accomplished and what has
failed to be accomplished and invites France
herself to lay hold upon the problems before
her, and to cooperate with the Executive in
solving or in preparing to solve them. The
Importance of the concessions" which Napo-
leon has just made in this direction can only
be fully appreciated when we consider their
probable bearing upon the condition of things
in France were the Emperor himself to pass
away from the scene tomorrow. France in
that event would find herself face to face with
gigantic and growing power beyond the
Rhine-a power which already threatens her
preponderance in Europe, and which, in the
event Of new intestine and revolutionary
troubles in France, would almost certainly
overthrow that preponderanee finally and for
ever.
The consolidation of Italy and of Germany
has completely changed all the relations be-
tween the internal condition and the external
influence of France, and this in such a way
that nothing but the absolute necessity of
working out a government at once expressive
of the nations will and equal to WELD the
nations strength, is at all likely hereafter to
drive France into violent revolution. The
passage-ways into power which Napoleon, by
confessing his own mistakes, and by inviting
cooperation, has now opened for the political
intelligence of France, will be found, we sus-
IL %,
have obviated any such absolute and perilous
necessity.
Dangerous rivals the Napoleonic dynasty
has never had in the traditions or the affections
of France. The Legitimist party has no strength
save such as it might derive from the Church,
if it were strong enough in itself to make it
worth the Church's while to seek a real alli-
ance with it. The House of Orleans left an
ill-name on the scaffold of Philippe Egalite,
and the bourgeois king, Louis Philippe, did not
greatly benefit his fathers inheritance. His
grandson the Count of Paris, is a stranger to
France; and though Frenchmen might, and
probably would turn to that young prince in
the emergency of an actual revolution, it is
grossly unlikely that any actual revolution
will ever be attempted in his behalf. The
memory of the republic is hardly less odiOus
in France than that of the Bourbons; and the
only leading man now on the stage who would
be at all likely, on the demise of the Emperor,
to attempt republican revolution, the Prince
Napoleon, has an evil repute both from his
reported caution on the battlefield, and from
his well-known recklessness in private and in
political life.
With all these negative advantages already
assured to his successor, the Emperor NapO-
leon has gradually combined, first, such an
external concentration of national problems as
must needs make both French statesmen and
the French people wary of unnecessary
changes, and, now, such preliminary expan-
sion of the gateways of power as promises to
obviate hereafter any necessity for sudden and
destructive pressure upon the portals. 1t
cannot be denied, we think, by any one who,
from the Emperor's present standpoint, looks
back upon his fifteen years of dominion and
forward into the uncertain future, that he
has thus steadily increased rather than
diminished the chances in favor of quiet
transmission of his sceptre to the youthful
! prince upon whom his policy has for some
years past more and more visibly centred.