Wilmington journal. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1844-1895, 1870-03-04
The French Poll.tcal situation

ACCORDING 10 me UetalI0O narratives OF
the enaeste in Paris, February 7th, as they
are given by the Paris correspondents 81
the London journals lately received, it wa
a much more miserable fasco than APP
peared from the account by telegraph. -
The barbados were no longer the serious
obstruction they were in former times
Baron Hausemann's remodeling of the
streets of Paris has rendered the Old-fash-
toned barricade an impossibility. Nor
were the men who defended them Of the
same class known to former generations.-
In fact, the barricades are described as OF
the most childish description, and the de.
tenders of them ran away whenever the
police and civic guards came up. It APP
pears, indeed, that those who once threw
up barbados, the mechanics and work
ingmen, are now having plenty of employ
ment on the side of law and order. There
are no more intelligent and gallant people
in the world than the French of these
classes, and, barbados or 60 barricades.
it seems to be admitted that when they
choose to go down into the streets again
it will be DO childs play But all
the correspondents agree that the fol-
lowers of Rochefort aud Flourens in
Paris is mere rabble, and that while the
latter is man of courage, be is evidently
monomaniac. There is another sugges-
tive feet The Bourse was wonderfully
firm under all the perturbations. The
late events, however, in the French Cham
bers would seem to be more deserving OF
attention. Hitherto the Olivier ministry
has been sustained by the Majority of the
Chambers. That ministry is liberal, coz
sentative, and il is engaged in an expert
ment for free government il France, and
the coexistence of the imperial dynasty.
But when Olivier announced, on the 24th
ult., that the government proposed to
abandon the system of placing in tue field
and supporting official candidates for the
Chamber, he was met by storm of dis
approval from his own party friends, and
the only approval he received was from his
political antagonists The fright" on
which he leaned for support, was composed
mainly Of men who owed their positions
to the fact that they were official candi-
dates, and refused to sustain the minister,
whilst the deputies of the cleft" declared
they must support the minister because
they were pledged to electoral freedom,
and for no other reason. The journals of
the "right" have also assailed the position
of M. Olivier, but, according to the latest
telegraphic dispatches, the Emperor
declares that harmony exists between
himself and his ministry, and
as he believes, they have the sympathy of
every honest Frenchman. This, it would
seem, II we are correct In our reading CT
the not very lucid statement of the dis
patches, that the Emperor is ahead of the
age in his own country, as he certainly is
of the practice in this, if he opposes the
giving of the influence of the central gov
eminent to candidates for legislative po-
sitions. If the Emperor is really deter
mined no longer to stand solitary and
apart from the great nation of which he is
the chief, or to treat it as thing exter-
nal to himself, the fact is deeply significant
of the growing progress and power of
liberal ideas and sentiments in France
No one has studied the French people
longer and more thoroughly than the
astute and wary old gentleman who has
hitherto kept his seat so successfully in
the imperial saddle. One of the bitterest
enemies has said THAT during the periods
of his Imprisonment and of his exile, the
relations between him and the France of
his studies were very like the relations be-
tween an anatomist and corpse. He lec-
tured upon it; he dissected its fbres he
explained its functions; he showed how
beautifully nature in infinite wisdom had
adapted it to the service of the Bonapartes,
and how, without the fostering care OF
these same Bonapartes, the creature was
doomed to degenerate, and to perish out
of the world" The Creature" seems to