The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-10-18

peasant to take OF his own risk from the
Republic.
Active political preferences the
peasant has none. To his monoto-
nous life of labor the substitution of
one ruler for another makes very little
difference indeed Here and there, as in
Champagne, the "Napoleonic legend" still
hourishes, Just as Orleanism survives in the
commercial towns; but the peasant will not
expend sou for the Imperial dynasty any
more than the merchant will raise hand for
the Count of Paris. What, however, Napo-
leonism has done for his political education
is to arouse in his mind an intense aversion to
being governed by the towns. Power has for
twenty years rested on the votes of the
peasantry, and the peasant can hardly like to
see his work overthrown 10y an emeutg in the
streets. Republic means the rule of the
shopkeeper and he hates and enves the shop
keeper. Above all, it is "a government of
lawyers" and meshed, as he very commonly
is, in lawsuits and mortgages, he re-
CARDS the lawyer as his natural foe.
And here he finds himself at one with the
sympathies of a class which has still per-
ceptible influence on rural opinion-the legi-
timists. The shabby young marquis who
lounges along the shore of some little Breton
watering place is utterly powerless to obtain
what he likes; but it by no means follows that
he is powerless to destroy, or at least to in
duce others to destroy, what he does not like.
The empire was partly of his own making.
In his eyes it was a mere usurpation, of
course: O mere continuance of the Te0i113e of
iniquity and fraud which had robbed him and
his ancestors of their rents since 80. But
still he never repented having helped to make
1t. In the first place, il made Paris brighter
and pleasanter, and his months fling in Paris
is the holiday for which the young marquis
scrapes and starves during the rest of the year.
And, in the second place, its hand lay very
heavily on the classes who robbed him and
his, the 60urgeCi6e and the 0u0rier, the
Dantons, and Marats, and Robespierres, of
whom he believes the republican party to
be composed. He could pardon very much
to the man who had to q certain extent
avenged his wrongs, and who has been clever
enough to trample under foot the democracy
that had ridden over the necks of his auces-
tors. This was what the marquis meant when
he took his cigarette from his lips aud as
sured you that the Emperor was ''tres-intel-
Ggent." To legitimist of this sort the pro-
clamation of a republic is simply the getting
mp again of foe whom he had for the last
twenty years seen on the ground with i'm
mense satisfaction. He can hardly help being
Initiated, and, slight as his direct influence
is, he can manage in some degree
to communicate his irritation to the peasant.
The old jealousy of the aristocracy which
caused the rejection of De Tocqueville in
1913 by the farmers ef his village, on the
ground that he was ga noble, " has pretty well
died away, and if the balance of opinion in
the country districts once really wavers, the
bitterness of the Legitimist party may tell
fatally against the republic But, if it wavers
at all, it will hardly waver for political rea-
sons. The life of the peasant is chained to
bis bit of land; he is proprietor, not poll
tician. Proclamations about federation of
the Latin peoples, declamations against the
penalty of'death, the rhetoric of Victor Hugo,
the logic of Jules Favre, are all without the
slightest meaning or interest to him. So long
as those gentlemen of Paris like to arnuse
themselves with these, he is not likely to stir.
So long as his bit of land is safe, republic
OF empire is alike to him. But for twenty
years he has been assiduously taught that a
republic means peril to property. To hlm
tie red flag means pillage, and, though Gam
beta has managed for the moment to put it
aside, it waits it's turn to supersede the tri-
color Louis Blanc is q polished and gen.
temaply man to those who have had the
pleasure of his acquaintance in London, but
the peasant of France has not had that
pleasure, and to him the reappearance of
Louis Blanc means the temperance of Com
munism. The elections fer the Constituent
Assembly will soon let us see in what temper
the French villager regards the new insti-
tutiops of his country. But it would be
a great mistake to suppose, as has lately
been supposed, that the similarity of the
last revolution to its predecessors means that
Paris is still France, and that her political
convictions will impose themselves on the
country. Paris, fighting the enemy, is sim
ply allowed to fight him in her own way; but,
fighting once over, the natural relations of
things can hardly fail to be restored, and the
French statesman will have to look for the
solution of its administrative problems, as
during the empire, in its village politics.