The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-09-10

n dItorIaI Opinions Of the Leading Journals
IIpon Current Topics-COmpiled Every
Day for the Evening Telegraph.

relative to the actual condition OF the health
of Napoleon, and transmitted to us by the
Atlantic cable, are contradictory. His Ma
iesty presided at the Council of Ministers held
at St Cloud, but postponed his visit to Paris.
One despatch says his health is improved
another intimates that he was not seriously i'll
at any time, whilst third informs us that he
is ''much improved" in condition. That he is
invalided is, however, certain. 1t is said. in
deed, that his system is Just now in a state of
''stagnGtion" of the vital force rather than
one of convalescence
The Emperor of France is in his sixtv-
second year. Though this is not an age that
suggests the close of a career where there is
robust health, or where life has been passed
with temperate regard to the requirements of
nature. 1t is a great age at which to bear
severe disease. Age is so important point
in view of disease that many maladies. always
durable in the prime of life, are always fatal
at sixty. Napoleon was, perhaps, never richly
endowed with vital force, and the store he
had has been sadly encroached upon by life
that in many vicissitudes has naturally yielded
much to the temptations of the senses nerve
and brain also have been somewhat over
wrought of late years, and now with
less elasticity than the majority of
men have at his age, he finds his sys-
ten torn with the oft-repeated agonies of
a disease certainly incurable and now appa-
pos ition is very grave. Nelaton apparently
ret 1ses longer to be responsible for his Ma
jestys condition. Ricord has been called
and 1t is reported also that advice has been
sought among the great doctors of GERMANY
Finally. however, there is a limit to the
utmost that science can do in keeping our
physical machinery in operations and we
may fairly infer, from this sudden summon
ing of all advice that may have possibility
tba oct oh tl,ot In; NJ
touches that limit. We see also that the EN-
press is kept within call There are critical
moments in the history of dynasties when all
depends upon presence at the capital and it
is apparently recognized at the Tuileries that
one of these maybe near. If Napoleon should
die with Eugene at Constantinople some one
else might be regent, and in that contingency
the chances of the Prince Imperial ever to
come to the throne would be smaller even
than they are.
Napoleons life is at this moment the most
important of any in Europe, for his death,
and his alone, may convulse the Continent
We have seen a Gar pass away and his place
taken almost without the consciousness of his
subject empire. If Prussia should change
rulers it would be only change of place for
the national portraits Other changes would
be most apparent in the almanac of Gotha
All these nations accept the fact of a reigning
dynasty; France does not; but her eternal
protest is that she will tolerate no dynasty;
that she is not the property of any family: that
she cannot be degraded to an heirloom, but is
forever the mistress of her own destiny. If she
accepted the empire, it was with Louis Napo-
leon as Emperor, and his very recognition of
her right to choose, while it indicated on his
part true perception of the only basis of a
throne in France, will be held as committing
even him to her right to choose again. France
cannot be bound by any law by any constitu-
tion or agreement written on paper or cut in
brass; neither can her own sons ever be for
an hour depended upon as an army to sustain
any system, order, or idea that is once repu-
dated by the national impulse. She is the
eRfGnt terrible of nations She will blurt out
her thought anywhere, and, whether in word
or act, will recognize no conventonality that
contravenes her sovereign and absolute will.
How can dynasty be made to stand in the
presence of such a people! No man can
count upon the life of the Emperor for day;
no man can count upon the permanence of
the present order in France for day beyond
his death, and with that order gone what
hurry y-burly may not follow? Napoleon has
Just disturbed Germany very greatly by his
propositions to give greater freedom to
France. How much more then, would Ger
many be disturbed with the French people
suddenly taking to themselves all the freedom
that others covet? With a tumult in France
how the present organization in Spain would
melt away! There is no house in Europe in
such order that it might defy the chances of
this possible crisis.
There is one peculiar hope for order in
France and Europe, and that is in Prince Ma
poleon. When France last had the oppor-
tunity to freely express her own will, the re-
public was set up. Louis Napoleon, acting on
the not unreasonable assumption that the re-
public was tending to a reign of anarchy,
gratifed his personal ambition by pulling it
the other way, and the republic, instead of
becoming a chaos and a butchery, as he pre-
tended to fear, became the empire. His hope
has been that the power thus gained would
be passed down to his SON. The conflict in
France, therefore. will be whether the
nation will yield to that one mans idea
or insist upon Its own. Will not the nation
1nstinctvely revert to the idea of the
republic and repudiate the claims of pos
sible tyrant in his minority? All the indica-
tions are that France is eager to try again the
solution of that problem from the eonsidera-
non OF which she was rudely thrust away by
The I'd OF December On the other hand,
many interests, no doubt, will endeavor theil
almost to sustain the claim of the Prince I'm
perial, and in this conflict there is the highes
probability that Prince Napoleon may stanC
forth as the grand compromise candidate
uniting in his own person the best that nigh
ee claimed equally by those favoring the re
public and the dynasty. For he is the bes
Bonaparte of them all. And if such a nation
IN TINS age, accepts the dynastic idea, it vii
only be IN the rare case where the successo
may be an intelligent and even able man. Ill
is also republican by education and appa
fenty by natural TASTE and his recent dc
clarations IN favor of liberalism are so muc