The New York herald., 1873-10-14
Ere nch Political Parties-A New Pre-
tender-The Revival OF an Old His
torical League.

tOrlcoi League
French history SO often repeats itself that
there is nothing new or strange in the attempt
just made by Prince Napoleon to revive the
old alliance which fourished from 1915 to
1s4s between the Bonapartists and the repub-
hcans. The Prince, whom Parsians nick
name ''Plon Plon" and "Le Cesar Rouge" in
his manifesto, which we publish to-day,
SO clearly nominates himself as tie leader of
this red and blue party that the whole opposi-
tion press has caught fire, and His Imperial
Highness has been rewarded with an explosion
of furious invectives such as, perhaps, he
scarcely foresaw. The thoroughgoing i'm
perialists, of whom young M. Paul de CAS-
sagnac, of the Pays, is a fair sample, accuse
him of being downright traitor, who has
long been watching for an opportunity OF set
ting up banner Of his own, and the repub-
lican sheets declare with one voice that they
will not be duped again into an alliance Of
which experience has taught them the cost.
This is all very we'll, but as matter of fact
Prince Napoleon's only blunder is that he has
spoken out too soon. If he had waited till
the Count de Chambord was enthroned
his letter to NJ Portals would not
have excited wrath. but general in
terest; it would not have been dismissed
by the royalist journals as an efusion beneath
contempt, but would have been discussed as
the significant programme Of party who have
no scruples and dare everything, who have set
their hearts on ruling France, and will be
permanent danger to every faction, royalist or
republican, that attempts to govern without
them. Even as it is, Frenchmen conversant
with the parliamentary history Of their coun-
! try must well know that pact between Bona
partsts and republicans is not thing merely
possible but inevitable The two parties are
linked by principles which appear outwardly
similar, and which have struck deep roots in
the national heart Both represent universal
suffrage, hostility to priest rule and equality;
both date their birth from the great Revolu-
tion, and their baptism of blood from the vic
tories won by Hoche, Moreau and Bonaparte
over the coalesced armies of monarchical
Europe; both are further united by the men,
ories of battles fought and prosecutions en-
dured in the reigns of Louis XVIII, Charles T.
and Louis Philippe when they combated side
by side under the common name of liberals.
The word liberal was, indeed, iirst coined
after Waterloo to designate the powerful party
who professed to uphold the principles of
1889 against the reactionary tendencies of the
Bourbons and the anti-Napoleonc policy of
the Holy Alliance. The old soldiers of the
Empire and the decrepit orators of the Con-
vention, the sons of men who had strangled
the Revolution on the 18th Brumaire, and the
children of those who had bled or been i'm
prisoned for the Revolutions sake on that
famous day forgot their mutual grudges, and
jumbled their convictions into common
stock for the greater confusion of the
reigning dynasty. 1t was at bottom a
grotesque alliance, for what bond could
there be between the sturdy republicans, who
believed in the rights of man, and those grizzled
dragons who had marched into every capital
of the Continent enforcing only the rights Of
tie sword? But politics are based
on Standardization on sense-and
the liberals somehow made their
devotion to freedom accord with their
allegiance to the ''Martyr Of st. Helena"
Their party kept sacred the anniversaries of
the 2lst of September, when the Republic
was proclaimed, and that of the 5th of May,
when Napoleon died; it sported punches of
violets, which were imperialist emblems, and
waistcoats with broad lapels called qilets d Ia
Ro5espierre; it spoke reverentially Of the mur-
dered Ney, who had been the Emperors pet
general. and acclaimed Benjamin Constant,
whom the Emperor had always hated and op-
pressed; in word, it was the party
of progress, to which all young men be.
longed who had their way to carve in the
world, and it had Beranger for its poet, Paul
Louis Courier for its pamphleteer, and Foy
for its orator. Those who are old enough to
remember the Paris of fifty years ago can call
to mind how ferocious were the party strifes,
how brutal and unprovoked the insults
which the henchmen of either camp
lavished on each other. The first per-
formance of new theatrical piece which bore
any historical illusions, the burial of O public
man, religious procession, q state pageant,
were all seized on as pretexts for violent
wrangles which ended in bloodshed. The
officers of the Kings guard would go to the
Theatre FEancais in body to hiss Mile
Mars because she was Bonapartist; those
OF the old Imperial Guard would retort by
hooting all the pieces at the Gymnase, then
called Theatre Madame, in honor of the
Duchess Of Berri; and royalists and imperi-
alists had each their cafe the Cafe valois
and the Cafe Lemblin), where duels were
prepared every evening as regularly
as if throat-cutting were the prime method of
asserting ones opinions here below Five and
twenty years after this-that is, towards the
close OF Louis Philippes reign-the Napoleon
republican fervor, though grown less turbu-
lent in its manifestations, had not abated in