The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-04-08
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France and England in their modern dis
putes about moral and material preoedenoy,
Eaged with solemn selfcomplacency upon one
Eide of the channel and vivacious vanity upon
The other remind us Of nothing more forcibly
than of a pair of old bruisers who, having
become through service or senility unfit for
the practical encounters of the ring, fight
wordy battles over their beer, and make
tap-rooms resonant with their theoretical
defances. From the day of Agincourt to the
day of Waterloo these rival powers settled
their differences by unmistakable and un-
adorned fighting; but since the 18th of June,
1915, they have done nothing but scold each
other like fish wives anxious, indeed, to have
the last word, but equally fearful of losing
time and their market in the delay of an
actual fistic duel.
When the putatve son of Hortense gave his
Ieprosied cheek to the granddaughter of old
George, a sharp ear might have heard the
silver clinking in the purses of either monarch.
It was a stock operation, and it was so under
stood: and from that moment, powers which
had lived in dread either of English insolence
or of English equity, knew that bills of ex-
change had taken the place of protocols and
treaties, and that the balance of power had
been superseded by the balances of the ledger.
The old traditional hate, it is true, remained;
but it was modified by the same self-interest
which keeps brokers from wrestling bodily in
Wall street, and breaking each others heads at
the sacred board. There is an eternal squab-
ble, and an armistice without peace and with
out an end. This one criticizes the other, as
ancient virgin No. l tears to tatters the virtue
of ancient virgin No. 2, who, at the very
moment, over her own Bohea, is engaged in a
like acidulous chatter. 1t would not be easy
to discover the use of this ceaseless crimina-
tion and recrimination; but, at any rate, it is,
to parties not in interest, sufficiently diverting.
This chronic wrangle has recently been
unusually lively. The faithful M. de Persigny,
true to the Imperial subterfuges and succeda-
nouns, has discovered and declared that there
is no good in Irresponsible Minister'S" and
that France is, as England would have been,
E'better without them.'' OF course, at such
q piece of Gallo impudence, the London
Times is awake and bristling in an instant. The
right and the duty of free-born Englishman
to kick out Ministers and to kick them in,
and to save his country by guzzling beer at
general election, is among the most holy of
rights and the most responsible of duties.
The two nations are not, of course, to be
compared. England is real, and France is
ideal. England is the land of common sense,
and France is the land of poetical and political
distractions. England has been governed
by the great Walpole, the remarkable
Chatham, the Pitts and the Peels, by the
aristocracy, hearty and ignorant, of the Tories,
and by the aristocracy, grasping and factious,
of the Wings. Meanwhile-and here we must
quote the language of the IimeS-France 'has
been governed by cardinals, by queens, by
mistresses, by intriguers, by theorists by
every class that disdains responsibility and
pushes a right, or a sentiment, or creed, or
schism to its fatal conclusion without check
or remorse." A Frenchman's knowledge of
English history is usually so limited that M.
de Persigny may be quite incapable OF strik-
ing back with the fine old plea of "You're
another - but, poor as it is under ordinary
circumstances, this, we think, would be the
best possible retort for the French Imperial
list. AT any rate, it would have the merit of
literal truth. England has certainly had her
share of priestly rulers, from Wolsey to
Laud and if her bishops have not now the
power of the Comptons and the Atterburys,
it is because religion of a certain sort has lost
its hold upon the English mind, and English
men are no longer to be swayed by the in
huence of the establishment.
If France has been governed by queens and
by mistresses, so the first English Charles
was swayed to his destruction by his wife, the
second by his harlots; so James IL divided his
devotion between priests and petticoats; so
the first two Georges shared what little power
the Whig aristocracy had yielded to the
for numbers than for beauty. The diaries of
Walpole and of Dodington are certainly not
deficient in the scandal OF ''intrigue," and
hardly record anything save the eternal
maneuvring of the great Wing families. II
there ever was Minister strong in pur-
chased Parliamentary majorities, it was Mr..
Pitt, who all his life was contending for
ga theory" and making war for the
sake of ga sentiment" which was poetry
in Burke but policy in his discples-a policy
so wasteful, so absurd, and so impracticable,
that it has been abandoned forever by Eng
lsh statesmen At no time have English politics
enjoyed that delightful immunity from ''theo-
ries" which their eulogists claim for them.
Theories cost Charles his head and James ii
his crown theories brought over William and
Mary; and theories fixed the succession in the
Hanoverian line. England has been fortu-
nate enough to secure the advantages OF
freedom without the horrors of revolution;
the "damnable work of government" was
accomplished long ago within her borders;
she has been fortunate in a people slow tc
anger. and with no natural relish for blood
She has good reason for being distrustful o
kings, for she has had but one able sovereign
since the days of the Tudors, and he was o
foreign extraction and married the crown
Much as she may scorn theories and abstrac
doctrines and natural notions of government
there is no man too blind to see that she is a
this moment at the mercy of all these, wit
such work of reform to accomplish, that
seems by a special blessing of God to hav
presented itself at a moment when the tel
denotes and the preferences of mankind al
pacific. For so much she has reason to
N ha