The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-10-01
THE FRENCH REPUBLIC

The first great requisite of a successful re-
public is that it shall be the form of govern
ment preferred by a majority of the people
subjected to its rule. If they are too igno-
rant, too tickle, too fearful, too closely
diced against a system which nominally vests
supreme power in their own hands, to cor
daily endorse a republic, it cannot perma-
nently endure. We may forbid one man
from enslaving another, but we cannot pre-
vent either individuals or nations from volun-
tarily enslaving themselves if they are deaf
to the arguments of reason and blind to the
attractions of rational liberty. This sort
of Indifference or hostility of a
large portion of the people
Of France to self-rule is the greatest barrier
to the permanent establishment of bona fde
republic in that country. The men who
constitute the present Provisional Govern
ment hold temporary power only by tacit
consent, and if they attempt to prolong their
rule, after the existing exigencies are sur
mounted in some fashion, without obtaining
explicit authority from the people for whom
they presume to act, they will be usurpers
despite a superabundance of liberal
professions and despite the avowal
of warm attachment to republican prin-
ciples. Yet if they order an election it is
alleged that a vast majority of the French
voters, and especially of the peasantry, will
favor the restoration of the Empire, notwith-
standing its fragrant crimes and its tragical
blunders. Such folly seems as incredible as
it is inexcusable, but if we take away from
II. klxoA Al
the majority must prevail, what remains
And if the mass is SO stupid or so stubborn
as to be welded to imperial idols, what right
have the enlightened few who desire better
things to impose their yoke upon
an unprepared and an unwilling
constituency true government of the
people for the people can only be established
with their free consent and maintained by
their cordial cooperation, and when a small
body of men impose their rule by sheer force
or fraud upon the masses, they have no right
to claim that true republic is established by
such an unwarrantable proceeding The
radicals of Paris, however, contend that
henceforth France must be republic whe-
ther her people approve republieanism or
condemn it, and some of them claim that this
question should not even be submitted to a
vote. Their doctrine, as proclaimed in lie
Rappel, is political curiosity, for that
journal alleges that "The republic is
above universal suffrage. 1t is not voted;
it Is. The single republican suffices to con-
stitute the universal republic The republic
is the sovereignty of the individual himself
This sovereignty is not discussed, is not voted
upon, is not proclaimed; above all votes,
beyond all votes, before as well as after all
votes, the republic was, is, and shall be" "
Few Americans would venture upon the ad-
yocacy of this sweeping principle. With all
our love for republicanism, we cannot see
how it Is to be established without the con-
sent of the governed. The first great step is
to secure this, and if the liberal orators and
writer's of France cannot make the bone and
inew of the land prefer light to darkness
and liberty TO tyranny, there Is but a poo