New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1870-12-31
TP1SCE-IREL4ND-IT1IY

There were two public meetings held III our
City on Wednesday evening, whereat Democratic
orators and wire-workers occupied the fore
ground-one of them prOfessedly animated by
sympathy for the embryo French Republic
the other impelled by fraternity with the Irish
Fenians just released from British prisons, and
now on their way to our City. That each had
a sinister object, so far as those politicians
were concerned, should not blind us to the
merits of its avOwed purpose.
AS yet, there is no French Republic, even in
form. The present rulers of France have no color
of right to claim for their power q republican
origin. Either Napoleon might plausibly claim
that he was "the elect of the people :" Gam
beta and Favre cannot. The people of France
may acquiesee in their rule, but they did not
authorize it, Nay: these rulers have resisted and
prevented q popular election whereby France
might intrust her destinies, with the shaping
of her institutions, to men of her choice-have
prevented it precisely because they feared
that she would not choose to be republic
ruled by republicans. We state but the naked,
notorious truth. Gambetta, Favre, and their
colleagues are sincerp republicans, and
would not have cOuntermanded the cleo
ton of National Assembly after or
dering it and fixing the day for it,
If they had believed that it would have
a republican majority. NJ. Theirs, at the
various Courts of Europe, repealed the sug-
gestion that he represented the republic he
represented the Committee of National De-
Tense, and affirmed that France had postponed
the question:" shall be our future form
"of government T-until she shall have driven
the invaders from her soil. In this, he spoke
truly. Were peace restored to-day, France
would tomorrow be involved in desperate
internal struggle between BOnapartists, Bour-
bonists, Orleanists, and Republicans, for
ascendency; and in this struggle the Re-
publicans will succeed, if at all, through
the divisions of their mOnarchcal add
versaries. We hope and trust that they
may succeed; hope that the bloody baptism
through which they are now passing may pu-
rify and qualify them to prefer and establish
republic. This hope alone lights up the
black abyss of wholesale suffering and misery
which France now is. Say that you sympa-
thize with France in her present trials, be-
cause they are curing her people of their mo-
narchical predictions, and we comprehend you ;
but We have no evidence that France is yet
republican and her rulers-who are repub-
icans--plainly distrust her as profoundly as
we do.
And when we see her commended to repub-
lican sympathy and support by politicians like
James S. Thayer. John Mullaly &C., whose
hearts were with the Southern Shareholders
throughout their desperate struggle to subvert
our Union as not sufficiently ductile to the
acquisitions of narrowing. and by John
Mitchell, who gave to the Man Thieves Re-
bellion the services Of his vitriolc pen and
the lives of his sOns-who publicly declared
that the Confederacy opposed to Liberty.
T" Equality, Fraternity" the watchwords. "Slay-
"eIy Subordination, Government when we