Year: 1872

Tho French Assembly-The Petitions
for Dissolution Thrown Out.


The force and exciting debate in the French
Assembly on the petitions from all parts of
France praying for the dissolution of that
body has been brought to close by the
unusual measure of rejecting the petitions
altogether II may we'll be conceived that
the monarchical and ministerial majority of
the Assembly, perfectly aware of the narrow
chances q general election would afford of
their being returned in anything like their
present force, should combat all attempts at
dissolution. The petitions in question. it
will be recalled, are direct emanationa of the
radical party and set on foot by the
radical press under the lead of the Ssecle
AS coli from the party headed by NJ. Gam
beta they were, above all things, open to hos
tility, yet the manner in which they have
been rudely thrown out indicates nothing
short of the passion that springs in irritable
minds from consciousness of weakness. The
right of petition, grave and sacred right in
all free countries, seems either not to be
understood by the government or else, with
sublime indifference to everything which is
not an emanation of their own party they
resolved to ignore it.


The debate on Saturday morning was
opened by M. Duval with the petit
Jogging assertion that the petitions
which were brought forward for the dis
solution of the Assembly were ir1egularly
signed, and were, evidently, the work of
agitators. Gambetta followed and swept
away the cobwebs of his antagonists
most skllfully. He pointed to the fact
that the country had given significant
and successive manifestations of its dissent
from the policy of the Assembly by returning
republican candidates in most of the recent
elections, wherein democrats had been success
full over monarchists, even in the ancestral
districts of the latter. He defed the mon
archists 10 establish monarchy. The Right
was greatly excited and passionately inter-
.rupted Gambetta. M. 'Audifret- -Pasquier
followed attacking the radicals and in de-
fence Of the monarchists.


On reassembling in the evening the Ministry
took part, when NJ Dufaure, of the Depart



the petitions together. The scenes and
speeches which followed are described as
violent and exciting, and were only ended for
the moment by a division giving two-thirds
majority to the government. Following up
this questionable advantage, it was ordered
on a second division that the Minister'S speech
should be placarded all over France. In this
mood it was scarcely to be expected that the
Assembly would agree to accord the same
public advertisement to the speeches of the
radicals, as was sardonically but, we
think, justly proposed. This way of
showing the people what their rulers think
good for them at the national expense is not
new, but essentially demoralizing wherever it
is adopted. To be at Illogical it should, like
our plunderous franking privilege, work with
some show of equality for both sides. The
radical press, it is stated, maintains dogged
indifferentism to the work of the Assembly and
urges the continuance of the work of pressing
for dissolution.


We must not at once conclude from the fact
that there was tumult in the Assembly that any
dangerous crisis is at hand Legislative As
semblies in France for eighty years have been
holding noisy carnivals without any sur
prising results springing from what the
Parisian journals complacently note
as 'stumult," just as we write
confusion" and the English press cloud
groans." They are, naturally, more demon
strative than either that is all But the de-
bate developed the condition Of things politi-
cally in France with considerable exactness
M. Gambetta, from his seat on the Left,
angrily defying the monarchists to establish
monarchy, points with taunt what NJ Theirs
announced in another form in his late speech
the impossibility of the monarchy. So far SO
good II, however, the old gentlemen of the
Right cannot have an Orleans or Bourbon
king, they seem determined to delay the actual
assertion of the Republic as long as possi-
BILE. Poor royalistic Micawbers Their last
chance seems crowded into wishing
that something frightfully democratic may
not turn up. The rejection of the
petitions gives feeble expression to this wish.
Gambetta and his party, emboldened by the
result of the late elections and the growth of
the republican spirit everywhere, find it hard