1 JANUARY 1870, Page 12

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

THE NEW FRENCH MINISTRY.

THE Emperor has won the game so far. The permanence of his success must depend upon the condition of public opinion in France, a condition which we shall shortly discuss, but for the moment the game is won. With a skill which we cannot but admire, even while we disapprove it, he has con- ceded just enough to satisfy the Chamber without surrendering one jot of his real power. The majority in the Chamber, pressed by their constituents, demanded that personal power should cease, and Napoleon, who has means of knowing the state of opinion in the remotest village, discovered that this demand expressed a real, if inchoate, opinion among the elec- tors. He made, therefore, the great concession of the 12th July, declared the Ministry responsible to the Chamber and to himself, promised a change of Ministers, and hinted, or allowed his entourage to hint, at real Parliamentary government. Aware, however, of the latent dread of Socialism which exists among the five million proprietors of France, he let the Socialist Press loose, encouraged Socialist meetings, and put off the session till the Members had time to see how these novel forces would direct themselves. The Socialists, instead of strengthening the Liberals, challenged Napoleon to combat in the streets, and the Emperor, smiling inwardly at enemies who would deliver themselves into his hands, accepted the challenge, descended into the streets with 80,000 men, and found them empty of all but a cracked poet reciting treasonable doggrel. After the 20th October he was the visible master once more, and he employed his advantage with characteristic astuteness. Instead of retracting concessions, as a smaller man would have done, he adhered to them, but insisted that the elections in which he himself had nominated the candidates should be confirmed. He knew well that this Chamber would be more friendly to him personally than any other, and he made this his sine qucl non. In the dearth of Parliamentary talent which has been produced by eighteen years of silence, there were but two or three men who could possibly form a Ministry, and of these two, M. Rouher and M. de Forcade la Roquette, were the most devoted of his servants. There remained M. Emile 011ivier, and that able but, as it seems to us, unscrupulous and self- seeking politician yielded to the terms proposed. He did not, it is true, agree to defend the elections as Minister, but he did defend them as Deputy, with a promise of the portfolio ; and the Chamber, already frightened by the Socialists into reaction, eagerly caught at his excuses mid validated the elections. M. 011ivier was then declared Premier, ordered to form a "homogeneous Ministry," and informed that the Emperor relied upon him to adhere "in letter as well as spirit" -to the Senatus-Consultum, and "to aid me in the task I have undertaken to bring into regular working a con- stitutional system." In other words, M. 011ivier is to be Minister of France under Napoleon, who retains his right of appointment and dismissal, who has successfully demanded his own terms, who is supported by a distinct majority in the Chamber, and who retains in the last resort the supreme right of appealing to the people for a direct plebiscitum. Napoleon, not the Chainber, has selected M. 011ivier, for his majority would wither away if the Imperial favour were withdrawn, and it is Napoleon, and not the Chamber, who will devise the measures to be adopted, who will govern, for example, the foreign policy of France. It is, in fact, personal power tempered by deferences to the Chamber which has replaced personal power tempered by deferences to the electorate.

Can that system last ? The answer to that question depends upon influences which no outsider and very few Frenchmen thoroughly understand. What is it that France wants ? Liberty? If so, she has not obtained it, and must renew the struggle. The right of speech about her grievances ? She has got that, we believe, to the full, the most marked change of the whole series of transactions being the enfran- chisement of the Corps Ltigislatif, the new right of its members to say unchecked very nearly what they want to say. M. Thiers, for example, was not stopped when, last week, he rose in a sort of transport to declare that he could not and would not be silent under the shameless lying of the Administration. Or is it a free Chamber ? That clearly has not been obtained, and it is at that point, we conceive, that the new compromise will break down. We suspect, if we could arrive at the real opinion of these they and the dictator are supposed to be about to enthrone. frightful masses of electors, these eight millions of whom so few know anything, it would be found that their real opposition is not so much to personal power, as to personal power unre- strained by free representation. They do not want Napoleon. to be a mere "fatted hog ;" those who do go a step further, and. desire a Republic. They are willing that he should have a. great influence on affairs, that he should choose Ministers,. that he should control foreign politics, that he should be unmistakably head of the Executive. They hold him to. be, on the whole, the most competent statesman in France, and would leave him almost as much power as he retains ; but they want their representatives to be free also, to be able to moderate or even restrain him in the last resort, to. have the power of forbidding Mexican expeditions and of" controlling expenditure. They want, in fact, Liberte comme- en Prusse, where the state of things which Napoleon is endeavouring to found already exists, though modified by the fact that the Hohenzollerns do not interfere in the elec- tions. If this is the real desire of average Frenchmen, they must be anxious not only for what they have obtained, but- for an honest representation, that is for an election in whicl. the officials shall be passive and the circumscriptions de-- scribed immovably by law. The notion of the Emperor is to show that he governs " aided " by a Parliament which agrees with him, and were the sitting Chamber a true repre- sentative body his notion would be well founded. We are no. friends to his rigime, but if after electing him, France, of her own accord, sends up a Chamber which supports him, it is not we who will attack the morality of his title to reign. But so long as he dare not allow the country to send up representa- tives of its unbiassed opinion, there is an unrecorded plebiscitum against him which destroys his moral claim. We cannot believe that France will be insensible._ to this fact, or that it will cease to support the demand of the Left that before all things there be a new and a free election, or that the Left will fail on that ground only to obtain daily accessions of strength. France, whether eager for freedom or not, is at all events logical, and there is no logic in a Chamber appointed by the Sovereign. whose acts it is to control. If it is not to control them, cat& qucestio, and France is a Sultanat ; but if it is, the Chamber must, in appearance at least, be free.

There are observers still, we believe, who declare that were a free Chamber elected ad hoc the personal power would still be supported by a majority, and they are not without argu- ments for their view. The peasantry, they say, though they want Napoleon to make fewer mistakes, still want him to. govern, and not anybody else, and would return candidates- favourable to that view. So would the Church, which dreads. the policy a free Chamber, and still more a Republican Cham- ber, would be sure to pursue in Rome. So would the lesser towns, whose opinion is really that of the bureaucracy, and would be directed, even if the Government were honest, by Prefects who have all been appointed by Napoleon. These three powers might, if combined, send up a majority before whom the Republicans of the great cities would be compara- tively powerless. That is true, but the answer to it seems to us quite final. If a free Parliament would be friendly to. Napoleon, why does Napoleon pack a Parliament ? if the majority is with him, why does he fight so zealously for seats which were avowedly won by the grossest corruption ? Are not all these efforts to seat nominees so many proofs that none but nominees could be implicitly trusted to vote for the per- sonal power? These are, we repeat, the weak points of the situation,—that M. 011ivier, however adroit, or however devoted, will not be be able to resist the demand for electoral reform ; and that if electoral reform is granted, the Chamber elected will be hostile to the Napoleonic re'gime.