TOPICS OF THE DAY.
TILE PRINCE'S SPEECH AND THE EMPEROR'S LETTER Tat Bonapartes are Jacobins who can govern, and this week the world has been favoured with an exhibition of both sides of the family character. One and the same Moniteur contains the speech in which Prince Jerome de- fends the Revolution as Reds understand it, and the letter in which the Emperor rates the Legislative Corps as "de- generate" because it refuses to sanction a military grant. The speech, though not the more important, is decidedly the more effective of the two papers, and we shall, therefore, consider it first. In the sitting of the Senate on Friday, the Marquis de la Rochejacquelein inveighed against the unity of Italy, the "anarchical" press of France, and the spirit of destructive democracy which he said was again abroad. It was all very natural from the heir of the memo- ries of La Vendee, but it rouged Prince Jerome into a reply such as only a born orator could have extemporized. The points were as telling as the whole was dangerous. He de- clared that the Marquis's speech was the programme of a counter-Revolution, defended the Italian leaders from the charge of ingratitude to the Emperor, and asserted that the raison &are of the Empire was only the Revolution. "The Emperor's health was not drunk," said the Legitimist, "at the Ratazzi dinner." "Not so," answered the Prince, the toast was given-in order, but it is at Rome that the Em- peror's bust has been broken, and the trusted friend of the Pope, Mgr. Merode, sheltered his personal insults to the ruler of France under his sooitane. The Marquis had talked with a certain subacidity of the election of Louis Napoleon as a proof of "the hereditary principle," but the Bonapartes, said, Prince Jerorde, "draw a distinction between two hereditary successions." They, like their founder, believe that the claim ceases when the "claimant ceases to merit the love and the' confidence of this great nation." The Marquis had spoken of his family. "That family," retorted the Prince, "obey- ing the dictates of their principles and of their ancestors, rent the bosom of their country by the horrors of civil war, while mine fell at Waterloo under the bullets of the counter-Revolution." The Marquis detested the. Revolu- tion, but if the Revolution were swept away, "the Empire," under which M. de la Rochejacquelein is a Senator, "would have no longer any reason to exist, and it would only be necessary to call in the Due de Bordeaux and make him re- place Louis Napoleon on the throne." Telling repartees all, though, perhaps, a trifle too frank, and we cannot wonder that the speech burst like a shell in the Imperial Senate. The members of that illustrious body are not much ac- customed to such rough tongues. They discuss liberty as some theologians discuss salvation, as something to be defended with gravity or attacked with reverential form, not something of vital personal importance to every in- dividual present. The scream of fear and rage with which the worthy- Illtramontanes woke from their dreams to hear the voice of the Revolution once again resounding through a Legislative Chamber, must have been pleasant to those Frenchmen, the few who are left, who believe Acts to be worse foes of humanity than even the Red Republicans. But when Prince Jerome, warming as the true orator ought not to warm, lost the control of his judgment, and the sense of his position—and we would say the use of his principles, but that -use implies possession— and thundered out a full approval of the revolutionary cries which accompanied the Emperor on his return from Elba, "Down with the emigrants !" "Down with the nobles !" "Down with the priests !" the Assembly recoiled as if the Day of Judgment had arrived for them. The Revolutionist stood confessed, and Count Segur d'Aguesseau best ap- prehended the scene when he simpered out, "This is in- stinctive." From every side arose interruptions, interpella- tions, calls to the President, sarcastic interjections, and at last threats. M. Billault tried to restore order, but oil only calms the waves, it will not stop a cascade, and the Senate; in terrible agitation, suspended their sitting. They had reason for agitation. There has not been such a 'speech heard in a French Legislature since the Council of the Five Hundred was closed by bayonets, for the de- mocrats of Louis Philippe's day were not Reds, and the followers of Ledru Rollin did not speak like this man with absolute power at their backs. The Revolution has found a voice in a Senate where every man has a salary, and one is half tempted, in delight at seeing -the dead bones stir once more, to forget whose power is giving them that ghastly simulation of life. But little thought, however, is required to recal English Liberals to a.sense of the true significance of all this. It is not liberty with which Prince Jerome is sympathizing, but the ideas of the Republique Rouge. The Revolution, properly interpreted, restrains kings, it does not boast of an "august founder" who conquered half Europe and decimated his own people. It limits aristocratic power, but it does not send the noblesse to the guillotine ; it contends heartily and openly with priestmft, but it does not cry "Down with the priests !" It is this misdirection of the spirit of liberty, this worship of force when directed against those whom we disapprove, this rush through blood to a new society, which Europe so deeply dreads, which has made the true Re- volution so distrusted, and which the Empire is supposed to restrain. It is the false not the true Revolution which this Prince Jerome affects. Can any man believe that he, a Bona- parte, really cares for liberty, if liberty would restrict his power, or would respect constitutionalism, or obey moderate ideas, or, in short, do anything except destroy all that is old, not because it is bad, but because it stands in his way P He hates the Tiltramontanes, as do most Englishmen, but their detestation is for an evil principle, his for an Opposition. He would enfranchise the press, and so would they, but his liberty is liberty to denounce, and theirs only to analyze. The words of the speech are vigorous and even healthy enough, but the occult meaning, the spirit of the Revolution which destroys but does not construct, breathes through them all, and the Senate was right at once in its fear and in its reprobation.
The spirit which animates the speech is not, however, the only reason for blame. It will do mischief more important than ruffling the nerves of a few French peers. The subject of the debate was the position of Italy, and the occasion of the outburst was the accusation flung at Victor Emanuel of sympathy with the Mazziuians. The speech of Prince Jerome, always the strongest defender of her claims, and by- his marriage a member of her royal House, links the cause of Italy, to all appearance, with that of the Revolution, the cause to which it does not belong. The special excellenceof Italian regeneration is that it has been effected without dis- turbing society, that a country but yesterday enslaved is well-governed by a free Parliament, that there have been no proscriptions, no massacres, no sentences, except by the regular tribunals or courts-martial, that the people, however excited, have never attacked a class, not even the princes who oppressed them, nor the priests who now denounce their freedom as an impiety against God. It is this restrained and humane vigour which has given Italians the support or England, which has emboldened Ricasoli to appeal to Europe to judge between him and the charges of the reactionaries, and which has enabled the Emperor to face the dislike of all French politicians to create a sixth Power, with her boundaries in the Mediterranean. For months he has anxiously striven so to measure opinion as to make the evacuation of Rome seem a just concession to the claims of the nationalities, with- out involving the surrender of the Papacy into the hands of the Revolution. And now Prince Jerome has, in the eyes of all Frenchmen, so linked them together, that if Louis Napoleon withdraws the troops, the act will be read by all men on the Continent as a concession to those Jacobin principles which the Empire was intended to limit. It is not to the cry of "Down with the nobles !" that the Emperor can ask the support of England; and not with the cry of "Down with the priests !" that be can allay the apprehensions of the 'Catholic world. We say priests, for though the Prince tried to explain his words, and use traitres for pt.& re*, that was apparently only an afterthought. He was quoting Thiers, and Thiess says distinctly " pretres " and besides, he was talking of Italy. The Prince is too good an orator to be suspected of words without meaning ; and who are these traVres against whom the Empire is to direct its force in the Italian matter ? The speech is a misfortune, even if the Emperor sympathizes with its drift. If he does not, if, as his history would seem to prove, he dreads but one thing as much as dethronement, and that is the Revolution, then the speech can but renew his conviction, that the old danger is still but concealed, and induce him to close still more resolutely the doors which, if they admit the fresh and healthy air, admit also the draughts which give fresh power to the hardly smothered fire. A probation for Italy, con- tinued till society is endangered, or fresh repression in France,—these are the only alternative consequences of Prime Jerome's disastrous display. Let us look at the other side of the imperial mind. General Montauban, who commanded the French force in China, has been created, fonhia services, Count de Palikao- a curious title, but not, perhaps, more absurd than that of the English Viscount whose title comes from a Portuguese cape. He has also been created. a Senator, and recom- mended for a dotation of 2000/. a year. There is nothing un- usual or extravagant in the arrangement, but it has produced a fierce and most unexpected burst of opposition. General Montauban is most unpopular in the army, and there is some Algerine transaction recorded against him which society has not forgiven even to a victor whose laurels were earned so far away. The Legislative Corps will, it is said, refuse the grant, from which its murmurs have already taken all grace and spontaneity. So clear is the dislike to the measure, that the Emperor has penned a Napoleonic letter, and published it in the 3foniteur, declaring that the Legislative Body has forgotten Montauban's services on the morrow of victory, that the Emperor had wished to honour by a na- tional dotation an unexampled success, and that" degenerate nations alone higgle about their public gratitude." In re- commending the dotation the Emperor is officially in the right.
If Montauban was fit to command he is fit to receive the reward of victory, and it is especially necessary to reward most freely those whose distant services may be forgotten in the presence of inferior but more visible services at home. But if an Emperor can publicly censure his Legislature thus with success, what becomes of its authority ? And if be is not successful, what becomes of his own P French legisla- tors give up much, but honour is dear to them yet ; and a public reprimand of this kind may seem to the majority not so much to justify as to demand opposition. The Emperor, we believe, has made a mistake, and the crowds who for hours thronged the mairies to read the Moniteur, the Em- peror's letter, and the speech of "notre Prince," prove that there are still men in France eagerly waiting for the low sough which heralds the breaking-up of the ice. The diffi- culty may be surmounted with ease, General Montauban may insist on withdrawing, or the Legislature may declare, as English Senators would, that they cannot in such a matter decline to ratify the personal pledge of the sovereign ; but the effect will remain. The iron hand has been seen under the velvet glove ; there has been an open appeal to the army against the Legislature ; and it is plain, even to French prolitaires, that the " master " claims exemption from the restrictions which be himself has imposed. In one and the same day members of the reigning House have avowed clearly the Red ideas which frighten the middle class, and the autocratic spirit which alienates the Reds.
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