The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-03-04
FRANCE AND THE BONAPARTES.

From the N Y. World.
''The Assembly enthusiastically and unanimously
uOted by aCcamation resolution offered by M.
large, decreei'ag the fall Of the empire and stigma
izing Napoleon as the author Of The n.tfort9neS c
Thursday
This vote may perhaps have been need
less formality; but the people of the United
States are glad to see the condemnation of
the empire and of the Bonaparte dynasty
put fairly on record. 1t is the best possible
answer to the fallen Emperor's manifesto
from Wilhelmshohe on the day of the recent
French elections. We rejoice that France
has escaped the Bonaparte incubus. The re-
suit might have been different if the Ger
mans had chosen to restore Napoleon, and
we must give them the credit of having alb
stained from any undue interference with the
internal government of France, aud of leav-
ing the opposition to Napoleon to take its
free course. His only chance of restoration
was in possible German connivance; and tho
crisis having passed without aid from that
quarter, the hopes of the Bonapsrte family
are buried forever.
That family has been the greatest scourge
and curse ever visited upon France, or in
recent times upon Europe. 1t must be con-
ceded that both nephew and uncle were able
internal administrators, but the order and
system which prevailed in their interior man
agement, was perfection in the art of collect
the Bonapartes depended upon their foreign
policy for influence and consideration at
home, and each was prostrated and crushed
by the recoil of this favorite engine. The
first and the second empire alike ended in
convulsion and storm, in the humiliation of
France and the fall of its capital. Both of
the Bonapartes were overwhelmed by foreign
wars begun without necessity upon au eyre
| gious miscalculation of results. Each of
ss,k he Nf
craven surrender of his person to the enemy
against whom he had been fighting, and they
were alike disappointed in the advantages
| they expected from course so inconsistent
with elevation of character.
We trust that this terrible repetition of the
terrible lesson of 1915 may cure France of
foolish attachment to her worst scourge. The
| chief curse of Bonapartism was its subordi-
nation of domestic to foreign policy, aud
France ought to have learned by this time
that nothing could be more ruinous to her
unequalled splendor of the first Napoleon's
victories ana his brilliant career of conquest?
| Nothing in the end but vain eclat. Every
rood OF those conquests was wrested away
by the disasters which attended his downfall,
leaving nothing but the remembrance of
barren military laurels. Aud at what fear
ful cost were those laurels purchased The
| taxes collecteu curing the eleven years
of the first empire were equal to all which
were collected during the sixty-three
years of the splendid and warlike
reign of Louis XIV. Under the first
Napoleon France sacrificed five millions of
Frenchmen, most of them in the flower of
their age. That prodigal squandering of
life and treasure was a dear price to pay for
the glory of being governed by the most sue
cessful butcher in the annals of the human
race. The second empire did not make such
wholesale sacrifices to the Moloeh of war, but
the policy of the two empires was substan :
TALLY identical. The main prop of both was
vast army, the support of which entailed
grinding taxes upon the people. Under the
second empire there was every year great
deficit, owing to the fact that the military
establishment was too large for its expenses
to be betrayed out of the annual
revenues The public debt of France in
1852, the first year of the second empire, was
! 5,516, 1914, 600 francs; aud ia 1868 the public
debt had grown TO the enormous sam of
| -, e31 723, 10 francs, although the whole
period was one of uninterrupted prosperity.
And yet the French army, maintained at saeh
enormous expense, proved worthless in the