The New York herald., 1871-02-24
The French Republic and M. THEIRS.

France Is always young at heart" said NJ
Theirs in his famous speech before the French
Chamber of Deputies on the Italian question,
and such is the expression that his faith
| fnl biographer might justly apply to the
venerable statesman himself He has been
(, accused by his envious rivals and bitter
opponents of Instability in his opinions, but,
upon close examination, this charge is found
to be very slightly sustained by fact. The
world at large is apt, amid the whirl and
hustle of affairs, to form hasty, and, therefore,
very often most erroneous, judgments of pub
lie men, and one of the glaring defects even
OF some of the journalists of our day, who
should be cautious as well as accurately in
formed, is that they manifest a proneness to
leap at conciusons-in other words, using
rude but vigorous phrase of the Western
frontier, ''to halloo before they are out of the
woods"
Thus minds that live but in the
moment and for the moment tre-
quently fail to detect continuous plan
or meaning in the lives of men and the policy
Of nations. Applying their own microscopic
measurement to superior powers, they inccs-
sanity mistake the proportions of the events
and persoaages that they undertake to guage.
M. Theirs, one Of the most comprehensive,
versatile and erudite intellects of our epoch
the journalist, the historian, the orator and the
statesman combined, with eminent qualifica-
tons and endowments in every walk of mental
achievement-has been continual puzzle to
the political and literary critics, genuine and
seif-constituted alike, of Europe, for the last
fifty years. He has been classified as Legiti-
mist, Bonapartist, an Orleanist and repub-
lican at different times-in fact as
Everything by turns
And nothing long.
AT last, in his seventy-ffth year, in the full
ripeness of age and honors, we find him called
almost unanimously to the executive chair OF
the French republic at more pressing and
| terrible crisis in the fate of France, as an
! independent nation, than she has known since
the days of tle English and Burgundian con-
quests. La a moment the senile prattle of
the Bourbonists and the schooboy self
sufficiency Of the Orleanists-gentlemen
every one of them, perhaps but gentlemen of
an age gone by die away, and, from one end
of France to the other, rings out a welcome to
''the right man in the right place" so glad
and SO hearty that the great Powers whose
representatives are nearest to the French GEN.
tre of political action hasten TO recognize the
republic inaugurated under such auspices of
ability, moderation and patriotism.
Even the trembling hypochondriacs who
have ''red" upon the brain, and sniff the COM
ing OF M. Romieu's Spectre Rouge" in every
corner, are appeased. The revolutionary
''raw-head and bloody bones" with which they
have been haunted for some weeks past disap-
pears, and the odor of birthstone perceptibly
fades from the atmosphere. Blood and thun-
der proclamations have ceased, and France
awakes from her nightmare and sits there,
clothed again and in her right mind, at the
council board Of the nations.
The elder Dupont de rEure, who had
sting occasionally in the end of his sentences,
once said, "The republic will be possible in
France only on that day when there shall be
no more republicans" and Alphonse Karr,
the satirist, liked the remark so we'll
that he copied it into his popular collection of
sharp things entitled ''The Wasps." But NJ.
de fEure aimed his shaft at the noisy, brawl-
ing, tyrannical hordes of men who, in more
modern countries than France, abuse the
most sacred names and emblems for the pur-
poses Of faction, and whose entire success
would be but to substitute the grinding
despotism of coarse and ignorant multitudes,
led and controlled by vicious demagogues for
that concentration of power in the hands
crowned rulers which courtesy and culture
sometimes mitigate. The republicans, whose
watchword is "Ordsr, with Liberty" are
everywhere, and to-day as we fervently
believe, they are the majority not only in
France but throughout Europe, since, with
out a paradox, members of all other parties
may in this sense be republicans.
1t was in l849 that Theirs himself openly
exclaimed, ''The republic is the government
that divides us least;" and il it was symbol of
strength at that time how much more so now.
when unity, decision and earnestly combined
effort have become the sole conditions of life
to France!
Moreover, we live in an epoch practical above
all that have preceded it, Jeremy Bentham,
writing just about the same time when the First
Napoleon uttered his oft-repeated prediction
that in fifty years Europe would be republican
or Cossack, nearly paraphrased the sentence
by prophesying that in fifty years the ruling
word in Europe would be utility" And to
this the great world has already come. Steam
and electricity laugh at the pomps and vani-
ties of the past. They are democrats-em-
phatic, outspoken and irrepressible. They
are, at once, the champions and the servants
of utility" and they work for the people.
Therefore, when the great Krupp ordnance
those iron-mouthed trumpets of doom from the
fnundries of Prnssia-helch ont unnn the