situation, and of all dangerous persons in France. The success of the Republic, is of course, dubious, depending mainly on King William of Prussia, Providence, and the effect of the magnificent offer its chiefs for the first time in the history of France are able to make to the peasants, their exemption from the blood-tax; but, considering its means, its hurry, and its necessities, Paris, we believe, has chosen well. They say the Government was self-chosen, and in a way that is true; and the men who, with a victorious enemy at their gates, France in Revolution, authority ended, and two millions of people on the verge of despair, decide in the teeth of the laws to take the helm, and do take it, are, in all human probability, the men to whom that helm, by a right higher than legality, ought to belong. From The Spectator. THE EX-EMPEROR OF THE FRENCH. structed, with a great deal of art, a scaffolding above the falls of Niagara, and after having raised a heavy contribution from the immense crowd assembled from the whole neighbourhood to see him, he mounted majestically to his platform, and then threw himself headlong into the boiling waves at the foot of the cataract. He repeated this perilous experiment several times, till at last he was swallowed up by a whirlpool. Alas! there are some Governments whose appearances on the scene of the world are in every respect analogous to that of the American juggler: their history is summed up in these words, fearful scaffolding, terrible fall! On a few stakes planted in the ground, they raise a shapeless building, composed of fragments and bits borrowed from the ruins of the past; and when their task is finished, their bastard building, as without utility as it is without foundations, has only served to throw them headlong from a greater height into the abyss. What this amounts to is that raising a scaffolding is not building. To appeal to the vulgar passions of the mob is not to govern. One cannot build solidly except upon the rock." Surely these words must now come back to the ex-Emperor as a curiously accurate prediction of his own great feat. He did, at great pains and with much ostentation, erect a scaffolding out of fragments of the ruins of the past his uncle's past, which has served but for the same purpose as that described by him,- to furnish him with an artificial elevation from which to cast himself headlong into the gulf beneath. THE sombre figure of Napoleon III., for twenty-one years ruler, and for nineteen years Emperor of the French, will always seem to have been at once one of the most curious caprices of the historical fortune of France, and one of the most striking illustrations of the immutability of the law of strict political retribution. That after two attempts on the throne of France, one of them-the Boulogne attempt with the tame eagle-theatrical to the most ludicrous degree, he should have actually succeeded in Indeed, to none of the recent unstable obtaining the suffrages of the people, and governments of France has Louis Napogaining for himself a real chance of seizing leon's parable applied with greater force the power he so long coveted, seems than to his own. There has always been strange enough. But that, after such ante- something of the juggler about his othercedents, he should have succeeded per fas wise sombre and sedate impersonation of aut nefas in governing France for twenty- the Imperial character. From the descent one years with some repute in Europe, on Strasburg to the telegram about poor without any absolute disgrace, and then little Louis's " baptism of fire," there has have thrown away his power, if not in quite been visible at regular intervals in the exso fanciful and conceited a fashion, yet in Emperor's writings and actions a certain no less theatrical a fashion than that in amount not merely of theatricality, but of which he attempted to gain it, is even ill-judged and ridiculous theatricality,stranger, because it furnishes one of those that sort of theatricality which arises not curious little bits of complete historical from social vanity, which is often very tellsymmetry between the commencement and ing, but from the indulgence of moody and the close of a great political career, which solitary reverie. The laboured rhodomonis much more common in fiction than in act-tade which he addressed, from his prison at ual life. In 1843, when Louis Napoleon Ham, "to the Manes of the Emperor," on was imprisoned at Ham, he published some occasion of the removal of Buonaparte's striking remarks on the government of Louis remains from St. Helena to Paris, is a very Phillippe, which contained the following fair illustration of the purely intellectual sentences:"Some years ago, there was side of this deep flaw in Louis Napoleon's in the United States a man called Sampatek, mind. That any able man should have who went into the following trade: he con- written such high-flown nonsense in the be - lief that it would identify him in the popular | peror's policy has been the constant balancmind with his uncle, we do not in the least ing between long-headed caution and a believe. The rhapsody was written, we are craving for brilliant effects. At first he was persuaded, not out of contempt for vulgar very prudent. The war with Russia, which minds which it was intended to please, but brought him into such close alliance with out of the unsound superstition in Louis England, was a by no means dangerous Napoleon's own understanding. He cried stroke of tentative foreign policy: indeed, out to the Manes of the Emperor,-"The that such a Power as England joined him in people have renounced your gospel, your ideas, your glory, your blood; when I bave spoken to them of your cause, they have said to me, We do not understand it.' Let them say, let them do, what they will. What matter to the mounting chariot the grains of sand which fall under the wheels? They have vainly said that you were a meteor which left no trace behind; they have vainly denied you political glory; they will not disinherit us of its fruits. Sire! the 15th December is a great day for France and for me. From the midst of your sumptuous cortége, disdaining the homage of some, you have cast a single glance on my sombre dwelling-place, and remembering the caresses which you heaped upon my infancy, you have said: Friend, thou sufferest for me! I am satisfied with thee.'" That is not the sort of thing written to dazzle the fancy of a mob. It is the sort of thing which occurs to a man apt to indulge moody reveries of the subtle affinities which connect him with a great creative mind, whose career he hopes, or at least eagerly wishes, to imitate. Like the Imperial getup at Strasburg, so ill-sustained by Louis Napoleon's actual demeanour when introduced to the troops there,- like the tame eagle at Boulogne,-like many profoundly superstitious references to destiny' throughout his writings, this rhapsody shows a trace of spurious metal in the ex-Emperor's mind, which is not assumed for popular purposes, but is ingrained and inherent. The prisoner at Ham was, like all solitary persons, deprived of the aid of that implicit social criticism on his own most marked thoughts which living in the world of itself insures, and therefore his writings then had much more of this extatic Bonapartism about them than his speeches or actions have since shown. But you can see the same kind of fixed and dreamy enthusiasm about his idea of raising up in Mexico an empire of the "Latin race to balance the Teutonism of the United States, no less than in those dreams of destiny which have from time to time driven his slow and hesitating judgment into mad projects, like the Boulogne descent, and, let us add, the ill-prepared or unprepared invasion of Prussia. 6 The special characteristic of the ex-Em it showed how comparatively safe, for a war policy, it was. But his next attempt, the liberation of Italy, far more original, far more really grand in conception the only act, indeed, of his reign on which he can now count for anything like the deliberate praise of posterity- was far more dangerous; and this he himself knew, staying himself in mid career, lest he should either incur a change of fortune, or by succeeding too completely give Italy more than he desired or intended. Indeed, he soon found that the main idea of his policy was one far too potent over the minds of nations to admit of being applied just as far as he wished, and no farther; and the aim of the rest of his reign was to attenuate what he had done, strenuously supporting Rome against Italy. His next great conception, the foundation of a Franco-Spanish Empire in America, to balance the influence of the United States, was a failure on a great scale,— an experiment not even founded, like his Italian experiment, on any sound knowledge of the forces actually at work. Perhaps it was this sense of half-failure in Italy, and complete failure in Mexico, to gain any profit by his attempt to build up his kingdoms founded on the same principle, which induced him to attempt in the case of Germany the opposite task - much more wel come to the counsellors he was most accustomed to listen to-of splintering in pieces a new Empire of this kind in the very moment of its crystallization. There, again, we probably see the capricious weight accorded by Louis Napoleon to his own subjective impression that he was dreaming a dream of destiny, and not merely indulg ing his own political fancy. He saw himself breaking up and overrunning Germany as his uncle had done before him, and he took no real pains to guage the solidity of the rock against which he has dashed his already decaying power to pieces. For, naturally enough, while he has dreamt these brilliant dreams of external glory, he has given himself a comparative holiday in the much harder task of driving deep the foundations of his power in the hearts of the people of France. On a few stakes planted in the ground, he raised a formless building composed of bits and fragments of the rin of the past," and never realm. Certainly none of the unstable French Governments, which he described as raising ostentatiously a temporary scaffolding only for the sake of leaping from it into the abyss, ever took the leap with so strange an unconsciousness of the fatal whirlpools beneath, as he who is now, for the third time in his life, a political prisoner, and for the fourth time an exile from his native land. It is melancholy that a man who has spent two-thirds of his life in dreaming of power, and one-third in the exercise of it, should have to spend the remainder in regretting that he carefully made all the mistakes which he had before his accession so bitterly ridiculed others for perpetrating. till within the last eight months did he even its From The Pall Mall Gazette. ENGLISH IMPATIENCE. WE wish there were any reason to expect that the war between France and Prussia will soon be over, and that then the affairs of Europe will return to their old comfortable state. Evidently a great many Englishmen are very unwilling to admit that such a hope has no solid ground on which to rest. They quote the precedents of 1859 and 1866, and seem to take it almost as a personal injury that 1870 has not turned out a war exactly on the same pattern. It is on this account, perhaps, that they dislike for the most part the notion of France being deprived of territory. They have a sort of instinct that France might take some time to settle down after having to submit to such a blow as this, and that the Continent might be a good deal disquieted by her efforts to regain her lost possessions. The payment of an indemnity, they think, need have no such annoying accompaniments. It would simply mean an addition to the yearly expenditure and a corresponding addition to the taxation of the country consequences which would naturally be disliked by Frenchmen, but would entail no inconvenience upon the rest of the world. The sooner Englishmen dismiss any anticipations of this kind the better it will be for their own peace of mind. We shall make no predictions as to the duration of the war, but we will venture to prophesy that, whether it be short or long, it will leave behind it elements of disturbance which may not be laid to rest for years to come. The conditions of the contest have no parallel either in the Italian war of 1859 or in the German war of 1866. In both these cases the object of the struggle was - to fix the place of one of the combatants, rule by being an exception to it, we have no not in Europe, but in a certain limited area right to suppose that the extraordinary sucof territory. The battle of Solferino de- cess of Prussia will not give rise to great termined that Sardinia was to be supreme uneasiness on the part of other nations. in Italy. The battle of Sadowa determined Neither Austria nor Russia can regard ber that Prussia, not Austria, was to be su- aggrandizement with much complacency. preme in Germany. Each left the combat- Austria has German subjects who will alant mainly affected by the decision with most certainly be attracted by the new Gerabundance of employment on his hands. man empire, and if she pursues her natural Sardinia had to fit herself for her new duties, policy, and tries to increase her power in Austria had to revise her aims and readjust the east of Europe by way of compensation her estimate of the comparative importance for its diminution in the west, she may arouse of the various races which make up her em- opposition which will have an echo far bepire. But neither of these processes con-yond the limits of her own dominions. cerned the rest of Europe. The unification Russia, as we have already pointed out, will of Italy and the regeneration of Austria have her internal policy directly menaced affected only the subjects of Victor Emmanuel and Francis Joseph. The war of 1870, on the contrary, threatens to change the whole face of European politics. For two centuries France has been the leading Power on the Continent. If she has been beaten, it has been only by coalitions, and the fact that a coalition has always been needed to do it is in itself a testimony to the paramount character of her position. The present war, therefore, is in the nature of a fight for the championship of Europe. If France had won, she would have taken care to disqualify Prussia from challenging her supremacy for the future. If Prussia wins, she will be equally anxious to prevent France from offering a return match. In neither case is it at all likely that so soon as the wager has been decided the two combatants will shake hands and forget all that has passed. And even if the war itself should come to an end after another battle or two, its consequences will be none the less lasting. The Powers of Europe had learned to know France: they could in some measure calculate her orbit, and guard against her eccentricities. If Prussia takes her place in the continental system, all these observations will go for nothing. Europe will have to begin the study of political as-mediately display its natural powers of selftronomy over again. by Germany as soon as Germany has a thought to spare for anything but her contest with France; and whether she rejects all intervention on behalf of the Germans in the Baltic provinces, or comes to terms with Germany on that question in order to secure her support on the Eastern question, bodes equally ill for the continued tranquillity of the Continent. If Russia resists Germany she will have to fight her; if she compounds with Germany the two together may have to fight the rest of Europe. Nor are these by any means the only reasons for believing that we are still but at the beginning of sorrows. Those who take the most hopeful view of the situation in France admit that another great defeat will almost to a certainty put a final end to the Empire. We do not profess to grieve over this prospect. On the contrary, we hold that even defeat may be a blessing to the French people if it teaches them that freedom at home is better than greatness abroad. But we see little probability that France will learn this lesson without a long course of previous suffering. The adversaries of the Empire often speak as though it had been a mere incubus upon the country, and that when once it is lifted off the nation will im government and show itself none the worse It is not reasonable to expect changes of for the long disuse of them. If this is so, this magnitude to be effected in the space it will be in flat contradiction to all previous of a few weeks, and to leave no disturbance experience. The French nation has not behind them when effected. It is no matter been the mere innocent victim of the Emfor surprise that France has not yet ac- pire. The majority of Frenchmen have knowledged herself defeated, and asked to been its willing accomplices, and even those make terms with the conqueror. A great who have offered an unavailing but consisnation is not convinced in a moment that it tent resistance show traces in every movehas no choice but submission, and if the ment of the injuries they have suffered in fortune of war means anything, it means the contest. Men who have lost the habit that the end of the struggle often contradicts of self-government cannot resume their part the beginning, that the second campaign is in public affairs without blunders and shortnot necessarily cast on the same model as comings of all kinds. The Empire has done the first. Even if we allow that in the pres-nothing for the political education of France, ent war France will prove the force of this and whenever it passes from the stage the problems left unsettled by the revolution of 1848 will once more present themselves for solution. We cannot see that France is likely to approach them in a better temper than then. The Provisional Government of February had faults enough to answer for, but there was an elevation of aim about its efforts which, we fear, would have no counterpart in a provisional Government formed to-day. Those who think that the Empire can be displaced without a revolution, or that revolution when it comes will be found to have lost all its terrors, are likely we fear, to find themselves grievously disappointed. From The Spectator. POLITICAL CORRUPTION AND NATIONAL DISASTER. they did not agree so marvellously with the conspicuous facts of the war. The French have been not only disastrously outnumbered, but their armies have fallen ludicrously short of their nominal strength. Every one who knows anything of the war knows that of the 750,000 men whom the French Army should have numbered on a war footing, barely 400,000 fighting soldiers were to be found in France before the great defeats. And if this policy of embezzling the £80 paid by every French conscript as substitute-money, has been largely pursued in some regiments, there can be little doubt that it has spread more or less throughout the whole French Army. It is a "real cause," i.e., one proved to exist, and also one adequate to produce the remarkable effects which have been produced; hence, we may fairly assume it as one of the most probable of all the hypotheses accounting for the French failure. That the same cause, gross corruption, was at work in the Commissariat department and the departments regulating the supply of Chassepôts, every one knows. Everywhere the French Army has been starved to enrich individuals. A REMARKABLE letter in the Daily News of last Saturday-the Daily News, by the way, has been by far the richest in correspondence of value, correspondence with nuggets of fact in it, since the war began, - seems to afford the real key to the explanation of the gigantic failures of the French This is the more serious a lesson to us, Army. The writer was told by two graziers because pecuniary corruption is the very of Picardy, as a matter within their own root of the greatest and most menacing evils knowledge, that in a very considerable num- in every Anglo-Saxon society. It caused a ber of instances which they could specify the great proportion of the disasters in the Crimilitary authorities had got only 1,800 men mea. It caused enormous waste and many in a full regiment, instead of 3,000, though disasters in the American Civil War. It there were 3,000 names on the rolls. The still causes the greatest possible political modus operandi was this. Fourteen or fif- evils in American society. It was certainly teen years ago, private societies undertook at the root of the monstrous waste of our to find substitutes for such of those drawn Abyssinian campaign, where the published in the conscription as could pay for a sub-evidence goes to show, for instance, that a stitute. While this was so, those societies good million sterling was wasted on mules received the conscripts' money, and as it never wanted, or at least never used; was, of course, the interest of the Army that Consuls and Vice-Consuls received authorities to get the full number of men, huge commissions for a few weeks' serthe men were always provided. But since vice in procuring mules," we quote the law has required the money paid by from Allen's Indian Mail of the 23rd those who can pay for substitutes to be paid August, that "a large batch of camdirectly into the military chest, it has be- els was bought at Suez the day after come the interest of those who control the Magdala was known to have fallen;" and military chest to pocket the money and put generally, that several millions were wasted sbam soldiers on the rolls. These graziers on what was known to be useless to the exof Picardy told the Daily News' correspond-pedition, for the gain of various classes and ent that they could point out many compa- individuals. Unless there be some early nies which nominally consisted of 100 men, and severe check to this sort of canker at and could only muster 30, and as we have the heart of all great organizations, the said before, they maintained that the aver- Germans, who seem at present to be almost age French regiments could not muster completely free from the temptation to cormuch above half their nominal strength. ruption, will not only become the masters Now individual statements of this kind, of Europe, but deserve to be so. No namade as they only could be made, from per- tion can confess more plainly its complete sonal knowledge of a few selected cases, unworthiness to be held as of any great acwould be utterly worthless as evidence, if count in the political counsels of the world, .. |