New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1871-06-06

of the Presidency, this tOrtuiins Sau-hy vi
Nano,eonic tradition made him the tool OF the
other audocous and needy gamesters who were
willing IN risk their nothing against the
ohonoos Of n vast and dazzling success. That
Tho came succeeded was simply the conse-
,ronce If the time at which it was attempt
Cd France was thoroughly exhausted by Its
three long years of revolutionary effort, and an
honest man in the Presidency would nave
made the Republic "a permanent as the Ed
nire became. The fatal error of the French
WAS not i'm accepting the coup f@tdf, but IN the
tboupbtless leyity with which they gave the
KEYS of the commonwealth to servant Oh
whom they knew nothing, and who proved a
thief.
During his long and specifically prosperous
reign it was natural that the resentment Oh INC
honest world should elevate him into sort Oh
dignity which never properly belonged to NM
What careless observers, daZzled by the gliding
of the new and snowy throne, called his sue
cess was simply the result of the general IN
dustry and genius of France. There was the
same apparent prosperity under Louis Phllppe'
and he was as little the cause OF 1t as Bona
parte was after hun. III there was
an added life and movement IN GER
tain directions, it was because the En-
glish contagion of railroad building had
invaded France, and Morse had taught the
world the use of the telegraph. Paris was
torn down and built up again by that KING OF
the gnomes, Baron Haussmann, loading the
city with debt and Overcrowding its streets
with those camOrOus artisans who have since
overturned the throne. But the sarcastic King
of Paris used to say that his Imperial master
never touched a plan without leaving a
blunder on it. He used generally to treat the
august suggestions of the uneasy meddler with
contempt. salying all wounds of dignity by
assignments of eligible cOrner-lots to LOu-Lou
and his mother But to the unthinking tourist
and to those foreigners whose minds are so
constituted that they can see but one person
in an era, the dreamy and listless pretender
of the Tuileries seemed to be doing every
thing which the forty millions of Frenchmen
wrought in twenty years.
| He sorely strained his own powers OF ilir-
sion once or twice. The fiascOs of the Crlmea
and of Italy were sufficiently Obscured by the
smoke of burnt gunpowder to hide his imbe-
cility from the people at large; but the
diplomacy which eliminated with SadOwa,
and whose aftermath was seen i'll the retreat
from Luxembourg, began to open many most
unsuspicious eyes. He seemed to feel last
year that he was growing to be but an indif-
erent Sphinx; there were signs of his people
guessing his riddle, and so, Oh the most frly-
olous pretext which the history of diplomacy
records, he rushed into the most unequal fight
ever seen in the history of wars.
1t seemed all the way from Weissemburg
to Chiselhurst that the time set by Garibaldi
for pity to begin was come. Nothing was
ever seen more forlorn than that comedy of
the victory of Saarbruck followed by the rout
of Worth. 1t was enough to move the stOnest
heart to hear of him sauntering about among
the suffers, saying mournfully, "fOn m a
" trOmp6;" still, when he had no more
thought of fighting than his boy had,
grooming the old Napoleonic phrases
about the t6te TarmGe; and at last
surrendering when all about him begged him
to ride with them through the thin line of the
enemy. There was positive sensation of re-
lief to every feeling heart when he was safe
at Wilhelmsh0he, free from the wearing re-
spOnsibilites of policy and war. Those were
happy days. The Kaiser's cook was with him,
and the sharp Castilian accent of his spirited
spouse was away In the words of Mr. Whit
man, "he loafed and invited his SOUL" Some
times he reused himself and made little
speeches disparaging the Republic, but this
gentle exercise rather aided digestion. He had
"a good timen at Williams flights, and we
felt sort of sympathy with him in those
days. We heard of his expanding waistband
with the joy of the just over the wicked that
have ceased from troubling.
But now he has gotten to England, and the
Empress is with him, and his little court sur
rounds him. and they have kinded the flame
of ambition again in his peaceful breast, and
will not let him alone. He is full of plots
and plans vague as the smoke of his ciga-
rette, wild as the dreams of his early dun
geons. France has suffered too bitterly
through him to go back to him of her own
will. Only through corrupted army is it
probable that he could again attain dshon-
ored throne. And in any case, he could never
again represent the cause of order. His return
to France would open another dismal era of
agitation and intrigue. But it seems ne
cessty of his present life to be a pretender
He is the hooded hawk whom the courtier
fowlers rely on to strike the hunted quarry
of France. As long as his name is supposed
to represent any shred of prestige, so long will
it be the rallying point of the scortatory
hordes whom Paris swept from the Tuileries
on the Fourth of September. We should have
to think of France worse things than her Bit
terest enemies have ever said, if we thought
her in serious danger from a conspiracy so ;g-
noble.