The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-09-26

en6lte, and When, undeterred by this /
ridiculous blunder, he repeated it with exag-
gerations on the shore of Boulogne in 1910. |
The Revolution of 1S48 owed nothing to the
heir of the Empire; neither its immediate
success nor its subsequent breakdown was |
by the man who is sometimes |
saluted as the Arch -Conspirator of Europe |
In the long run events played themselves into |
his hands, and he became Deputy, President, |
Emperor. But all along he made |
use of the events, he did but little and that
not boldly, to create them. No doubt he
doggedly kept in view one, and a de-
finite, object-that is, the reaggrandizement
of Bonapartism; and he clung to this per-
obstinately, doggedly, but with very
little policy He was one of the italian car
bonari; the chivalrous imitator of the Eng
lish Pretender, the defender of order, aud
the author of the coup a. detat of 1851. But he
tried all these things by turn, tentatively and
experimentally, because the situation created
them, and he availed himself of the situation
and workedit it. The situation he never cre-
ated. He meant to restore Napoleon
ism but in haphazard way he
availed himself of chances, more
often failures than succe sses, which
might perhaps tend to this same end But
this is not a supreme mind; the supreme
mind is not only to have one great end-and
in sense that one end Louis Napoleon had
end. The great man is he who never blum
ders. Louis Napoleon has repeatedly blum
dered, and of course, at last, once too often.
Although such considerations detract very
considerably from greatness of character,
they at the same time account for, and in
sense extenuate, the worst features of the
late Emperors career. The most serious
consideration urged against the second em-
pire is that it has demoralzed France; aHd
hn ion ic .,r1tta tr,,a p,,t
must be remembered that France has always
been demoralized Louis XIV and old feu-
dalism demoralized France, under the Revo-
luton, because it destroyed but did not
create, France was submitted to another
stage of Generalization; the first
empire most fatally demoralized France,
so did the Restoration; so did the
Citizen King and M. Guizot; and we have yet
to learn the services to political and national
morality rendered by Ledru Rollin and his
colleagues of the Revolution of 1913. What
Louis Napoleon did was to accept French de-
moralization and turn it to his own purpose.
and to increase it; to add one sort of demo-
ralization to another, and to turn the existing
situation to his own purpose. He lived from
hand to mouth, and undoubtedly it was his
own mouth. Cavaignac was very likely an
honest man, and Lamartine feather-brained
enthusiast; but Louis Napoleon did not set
poleonic Cesarism; and as he had no good
elements to work WITH he worked with bad
ones, and so long as he gained his purpose
he never scrupled to make them worse His
worst crime, that of the coup d d'etdt, was proba-
bly, judged accurately by Lord Palmerston,
who remarked that as the co-existence of the
President and the Assembly was an impossi-
bility, it would be better that of the t two the
President should prevail. The solid objection
TO fhn icf fhotfk not
rate French political life; it may be feared
that the sad answer is that French political
life is incapable of anything worth calling
regeneration; Louis Napoleon's excuse is that
he did not undertake the impossible, and
only did what he could under the circum-
stances, which were no creation of his. 1t
may, and must, be answered that the mission
of great man is to give the political life of
his country those elements of stability truth,
and morality in which it is deficient; but our
contention is that the Emperor was not great
man nor an honest man, and did not pretend
to be great man or even an honest one. In
stead of reforming French public life, he
played into and used for his own ends its worst
characteristics. What he found was an in
tense, absorbing love of glory and aggran-
dizement in public and social life, and COR
ruption and intrigue and jobbery in political
life. These were the legacies of the First
King. This is what he found, this is what he
used; and certainly the fall of the empire will
not clear away these black clouds. The new
Republic, if it may be called Government
at all, has at present but one profession and
one principle, that is, to carry on the war,
which is, in other words, to carry on the prin-
ciple upon which Imperialism anchored itself
the passionate love of military glory and
the claim to European sovereignty. No
words can be too strong to condemn the evils
of imperialism; but it may be fairly con-
sidered whether perialism-latent, but real
did not quite as much create the late En-
peror as Louis Napoleon created imperialism.
He worked it, and worked it only as it can
be worked, to evil; but he did not create the
evil, or perhaps the necessity for it,
1t is Just possible that there may be dim
half conscious sense of this truth in the
French mind at this moment. Paris, and we
suppose France too, is execrating the fallen
Emperor; but after a few fitful and dsas-
trous experiments with republicanism it will,
unless Prussia can give France a new mind
or character, be Just as Imperial az fond as
before. Even so-called Constitutionalists
such as Theirs and Guizot-and, for the
matter of that, NM. Favre and IGambetta
are, as regards the duty and necessity
of carrying on the war, at one with
Rouher and the Duke of Gramont. France
has been a menace to Europe for many a
long year, but the French people would have
it so; and in exhausting our indignation on
the empire, let us not forget what made the
empire and Cesarism. In many respects the
Emperor personally is deserving of commise-
ration. Shattered in body and mind, and de-
prived of the men of genius who all along
have had more to do with the success of the
empire than the Emperor himself, the De