, 1875-03-27

say, is a lad who represents before all things
the cause of personal government, and here
are English Liberals, who detest personal
government before all things, quite pleased
because he displays capacity which the masses
may take for capacity to govern. There
must be a lurking kindness for the Bonapartes
among the English Liberals. That is a very
natural, but it is also a very short-sighted
view. The majority of English Liberals, at
least outside one easily. defined circle, that of
the statesmen who profted by the entente cor
dale, are in French politics more or less de-
cidedly on the Republican side. They are
tired of Revolutions produced by the Difficult
ty of getting rid of individual pretensions.
They would gladly welcome a moderate Re-
public as the defnitive form OF government in
France, and under the impulse of NJ. Thiers's
opinion are inclined, for the first time in their
history, to believe that it might endure as
long as any Monarchy. They dread the re-
turn of the Empire, with its agents habituated
to despotism, its Sovereign compelled to re-
press, its soldiers painting for war, its policy of
dramatic surprises, and its involuntary hostility
at once to freedom of thought and to the unity
of Italy. They dislike its social influence, its
tendency to the worship of material interests,
and its dependence upon the lives of single
men. Above all, they dread its success as the
success of an enticing but inferior form OF
democratic government "a form under which
democracy makes progress no doubt towards
its ends, but makes it by q sacrifice of all the
powers which could enable it to use its own
success with any sustained nObleneSs either of
method or of purpose. France grew rich under
Napoleon, and was orderly, and commenced
the enfranchisemen of Italy; but her political
strength had under him so died out, that when
he fell, the only statesmen left competent to
anything loftier than the role of political attOr-
neys had to be sought among the debris of the
Parliamentary Monarchy. Among forty mill
lions Of people, and with unrestrained power of
selection, neither of the NapOleOns ever found
a Minister at once competent to govern and
faithful to his OathS. Napoleonism might ensure
order, but only the Republic would allow a
new crop of statesmen to grow up. But the
English Liberals, though they feel this, and feel
it some of them, as we confess ourselves to do,
very strongly, cannot blind themselves TO the
fact that failing the Republic, the restoration of
the Empire is a certainty that there are only
two parties in the country which are alive;
that France intends, consciously intends, to
commit herself either to an elective Magistra-
oy or to this young Prince, and that his oapa-
city therefore is a question of the highest mo.
ment for all Europe. There Is one form Of
government, at all events, worse than Caesar
ism, and that is a government In which, under
a nominal but fain6Gnt or incompetent Caesar,
Sejanus and the Commandments of the Legions
divide the power and the spOils and the favour
of the Empire among themselves. A Caesar
ism without a Caesar who can govern, who can
choose men, who can put down plumber, who
can see to the rights of the dim Plebs below,
who can keep the Empire safe from panic, is a
C@Sarism with all its few merits taken out OF it,
is a despotism unredeemed by permanence, or
orderliness, or capacity of evOking loyalty to
itself. The head of an Empire of the French
pattern must be competent or a nuisance.
The dream of a constitutional Empire-Con-
stitutional, that is, as Englishmen understand
the words a dream merely. Frenchmen are
not going to condone Sedan, and recall the Boz
napartes, and revive the Napoleonic legend,
and expose their country to infinite risks from
Germany, and disturb half Europe, in order
that they may have a Government indistin-
guishable, except in name, from the Republic
which they must smash up in order to substi.
tute for it the rule to which it is most opposed.
If they re-establish the Empire, it will be in
order to be governed by a man instead of an
Assembly, and on the qualities of that man the
apparent success of their rashness must almost
entirely, in the long.run, depend. The only
safeguard against CaSarism il the wisdom OF
the Caesar, and if the Caesar must come, any
proof that he will be wise and able to initiate,
or good and able to set a tone, or intelligent
and able to receive advice, must be accepta-
BILE to all well-wishers either Of France or Eu.
rope. No doubt it is especially acceptable to