Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1893-03-23
8elntnttt GItrn,tirle.
PUBLIC OPINION.
THE FRENCH CRISIS.

New York Press.
The vote of the Chamber of Deputies
averted crisis in the affairs of the
French Republic, and its enemies are
once more baffied in their efforts to con-
trive its overthrow. There is evidence
enough that from the first certain men
in possession of the painful and astound
ing proofs of corruption and extortion
on the part of Deputies and other officials
have manipulated those proofs, not with
view of having justice done to the
guilty, but with the object of bringing
about revolution and the destruction
of the grand edifice of free government
which France has been building up for
nearly quarter of century. NJ. An
drieux and those for whom he is acting
do not care anything about the punish
ment of those who. either as Directors,
Deputies or Ministers. have betrayed
their trust and involved thousands of
French families in ruin. All they care
for is to drag the nation deeper into the
mire in order that the people may be
led by despair and indignation TO call
upon the Monarchists for rescue.
When Andrieux, the eX-Prefect of
Police, who is believed to be a tool of
the dethroned royal family, took the
witness stand on Saturday his testimony
was artfully calculated to create as great
sensation as possible, and to give the
impression that he held back much that
he could reveal. Then Nine. COttu, the
wife of one of the convicted Panama
directors, also took the witness stand,
and stated that the Chief of the Detec-
tive Department had endeavored to
ascertain whether she possessed any
documents compromising friends of the
government. This statement appears to
have added to the sensation, and to
have been seized upon by many as proof
that the government was endeaVoring
to shield public men who were in its
confidence and favor. A calm, dispas-
sionate perusal of the evidence, as con-
tanned in the cable dispatches, finds no
reasonable ground for such an inference.
A superintendent of detectives would
not be blamed, in this country at least,
if in questioning witness. and es-
pecially witness who had come to him
of her own accord, he should endeavOr
to ascertain the extent and character of
the evidence in her possession, and it is
most surprising that in France, where
the methods of police and judicial pro-
aaAr1 Trft
and direct than in England and America,
any such blame should be laid upon
police official. The manifest fact is that
the enemies of the government have
seen for long time that the folly and
crime attending the efforts of the Pan
anna Canal Company to accomplish the
impossible suggested an opportunity for
shaking the confidence of the French
people in their form of government and
causing stampede back to Bourbonism.
They have hoped that one error-a
stupendous error, it is true-would undo
the work of the hundred years that have
elapsed since Louis XVI mounted the
scaffold. They have been disappointed
and baffied time and time again since
the Panama scandal was sprung in No
yember last in the Chamber of Deputies.
But they hate to confess defeat. Hence
these theatrical attempts at sensation;
hence the frantic efforts to implicate and
besmirch the President of the Republic.
The French Republic is a splendid
fabric, and far outranks in the highest
attributes and purposes of government
the mottled monarchies beyond the
Pyrenees and the Rhine. NJ. Carnot, as
the elected head of a Republican State,
compares most favorably with the
eccentric Kaiser and the benevolent
Leopold, not to mention such so called
majestics as the child king of Spain and
the lunatic sovereign of Bavaria. Every
royal parsonage in Europe is ardently
wishing for the downfall of the French
Republic, simply because that Republic
is an admirable and successfl example
of the ability of an intelligent people to
govern themselves. 1t is all the more
gratifying, therefore, to see the repre-
sentatives of France disappointing the
enemies of their country by refusing to
be borne away in whirlwind of excite
ment over events that, however calami-
tous, are merely ephemeral, while the
rights of mankind to free government
are eternal