New Orleans Republican. [volume] (New Orleans, La) 1867-1878, 1874-07-22
The Men of the French NIarshalate.

Who are they and what do we know
about them! Very little, and it is not
entirely our fault Buffet, President of the
Assembly, Goulard, who has just died,
Fourtou, present Prime Minister, Tailhaud,
Minister Of Justice, these are not familiar
names. General de Cissey. and Pierre
Magne, the veteran fnancier, are more
familiar, but for the most part there is
striking elevation at this moment of small
men. Their careers have been brought out
and sketched for us, however, by master
hand in the London Necs, in q series of
essays, the most brilliant and trenchant, 80
far as we know, of any writing in c0ntem-
porary journalism.
There are at least three of these men
whose cabinet services ante-date the coup.
d'etdt of December 9, 1851. Pierre Magne
is one, suave old gentleman of sixty eight,
whose leading characteristics are tact and
common sense, who during thirty years of
public life has never known government
whose principles excluded him from its
services. There have been tiffs with rivals
in power. now and then, and vacations in
consequence, but never a monarchy, re-
public or an empire under which he would
not have taken Office OF course, this is not
peculiar in France, the only popularity
being in the fact that Magne stands nearly
alone in this respect in this cabinet. He is
an honest fnancier, and, after all his vicis-
sirudes, a passive Bonapartist. 1t was one
of the startling features of the last crisis,
that, while the Orleanist Broglie and all
colleagues were unseated, this BOnapartist,
Magne, kept his cabinet place.
Quite a contrast to Magne was Goulard,
the man who tried for week to form the
Marshalate Cabinet, and has since died of
chagrin at his failure. Goulard was born
in Versailles, in 1903, and became great
lawyer upon cases sin chambers" as our
lawyers say. He was elected deputy
nearly thirty years ago from the. High
Pyrenees, where he owned an estate, and
held Cabinet positions under GuizOt. After
the revolution of lS4S. he was returned to
the Assembly as an Orleanist. On the
second of December he was home late from
a party, and was just retiring when the
brigands of the coup detat arrested and
handcuffed him and carried him to prison.
When he was released, q popular vote had
ratified the empire. For twenty-five years
Goulard steadily refused all bribes to offices,
and temptations to public service, and
when he was returned to the Assembly,
after the downfall of the empire,
his thin, spare figure, satin stock and other
peculiarities of bearing and costume marked
him as a relic of a past generation. He
was not fossil, however. and was ready to
accept the conservative republic. Less lib
eral than Theirs, his unfortunate difference
Wluu IQo 1EoelUouU OV0CJuToW IuCu UUIu
He died with larger share of the genuine
respect of all parties than falls to the lot of
many Frenchmen.
The career of Buffet also spans the chasm
of Napoleonism. He protested against the
coup d'etat, and had dozen years Of retire.
ment, out of which he now comes, not
broadened like Goulard, but narrowed,
egotistical, impracticable. There was an
interval in public life in in which he
embarked in Oliviers scheme of liberal
izing the empire in 1869. Deceived in that,
he at last hates Bonapartism. and he loves
Buffet.
Then there is De Cissey, the young Cen
eral, who protested against the surrender
of Metz, a very soldiery sort of man. He
is, as much as anybody, Prime Minister of
| the Cabinet, and after his accession to that
post, the Assembly was, Of course. on the
| qui vive for his first public utterance. He
| stepped into the tribune, silence fell on the
house; he paused, and then said with great
gravity: "The government [pause] finds
| itself compelled to ask the House [pause J.
| for more stations" We can we'll believe
that the applause was tumultuOus. FOurtOu
is country town barrister, with the voice
of kettle drum; Tailhaud is a country
town Judge; Cum0nt a country town jour
nalist, and Grivart and Caillaux, all men Of
petty calibre, whose careers our essayist sci
forth with wit which we can not repro
duce, and which alone gives them interest
| Springfield Republican.