Year: 1875

IMPERIALIST FOREBODiNGS.


In q viyacious letter of one of our Paris
correspondepts conversation is reported,
caught on the wing at an Opera ball, between
an ambassador out of place and painter out
of orders. Both agreed that the world is in
its decline. Strauss was playing his best on
the grand stand The Republic was gaining
at every vote at Versailles. In the presence
of that bedoviled Orchestra, those laughing
women, this hurly-burly Of ten thousand pas
sions, these two philosophers predicted all
sorts of cataclysms. The Day of Judgment
was on the horizon, earthquakes and light
nings were making ready, monarchies aud
republics were sharpening their teeth for
mutual slaughter. The Observant scribe
thought it strange that men should calmly
contemplate such catastrophes; that a gay
party should predict all these horrors with
smiling faces, rejecting all the while that the
music was good, that there were pretty women
under the pink domnoes, and that supper
must be almost ready.


We suppose there is but one explanation of
all this. These sybaritic imperialists who re-
gard the coming of a republican form of gov
ernment as the promise of woes unnumbcred
do not really believe word of what they arc
saying. They talk as if the world would come
to an end if they are beaten in an election,
but they are beaten five times out OF six, and
they do not order their ascension robes for all
that. There may be some sincerity in the
horror felt by Academic Dukes whose shields
date from the crusades, at the gradual progress
| of democracy which takes from them their
absolute control of affairs, but it is hard to
| place any confidence in the warnings and
lamentations of an aristOcracy so new as that
which the first Napoleon raised out of the
ranks of conscripts, or the second one found
in the cutters, and the lodging houses where
he passed his earlier days OF ambition and
exile. it does not become these men. who
owe their twenty years of place holding to
the baldest and most vulgar corruption of
universal suffrage which the world has ever
seen. to pretend now to be shocked at the
possible consequences of democratic govern
ment. They are neither consistent with
their present professions, nor with their
past traditions. They pretend to the
fullest democracy. but affect a sort of
aristOcracy which does not cOmpOrt with their
names or their history. They voted the other
day to elect the Senate by universal suffrage,
when the first principle of the Napoleonic
Senate is that it shall be named absolutely by
the Emperor. So far as any one can see
they have only one inspiring principle-if
young Bonaparte comes to the throne they
will all get offices again, and the flush times
of singing, dancing. building. and stock
iobbing for the benefit of courters will re-
turn. One of the chamberains of the En-
peror admirably condensed the history of the
| in ba tbo
crowd tearing the imperial arms from the door
ways of the Tuileries, "No matter; we have
"had jolly good time at your expense for
twenty years."


1t is hard to see how any branch of the
Conservatives have anything to fear from the
recent decided tendency of things toward the
establishment Of the Republic Certainly the
most radical measure which the skill and dis
cipline of the Left and the impulse of public
opinion have been able to push through the
present Assembly has been the adoption of the
Constitutional laws providing for the election
of the Senate. 1t insures for this important
legislative body a membership and method of
| election no more conservative than those
of our own Senate, and completely excludes
that interference of the chief of the State
which made preceding Senates in France so
subservient to power. This vote produced q
crisis in the Government. 1t was given out
that Marshal MacMahon, whose devotion to the
| Scptennate is of the most sincere and earnest
character, was going to accept the decision of
the Assembly and form n Cabinet fully as
liberal las the recent voting. The Cabinet,
which yesterday seemed likely to be reelected,
was not sincerely Republican, which was


hn t.I
MacMahon. But, on the whole, it was
as respectable and as able rs any
which can be given to France. Although
we arc now informed that the cOmbina-
tions, which were thus to have resulted in o
new Ministry, have failed. We have no rea-
son 10 anticipate that. when q Cabinet is
formed, it will be composed Of less merito-