TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE MARSHAL-PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE.
THE Message of Marshal MacMallon to the Assembly, the letter of the Comte de Chambord to his friends, and the attitude of the Republican party combine to produce the same conviction in dispassionate minds,—a conviction that only two alternatives are before the French Representatives. They can go on quarrelling as they have hitherto done, in which case the Septennate will go on as a provisional government dependent upon one man's life, or they can agree to the Dissolution which alone can create a solid working majority. No other alterna- tive is before them while the Marshal retains his hold upon the Army. He originally intended, we believe, to ask in the most pressing manner for laws " constituting " his powers,—that is, for laws creating a Second Chamber, regulating the transmission of the Presidency in the event of death, and providing for the dissolution and re-election of the Assembly, but his plan was interrupted by a new incident. The Comte de Chambord perceived that an organised Septen- nate might prove a fatal obstacle to his hopes, and forwarded to a trustworthy Legitimist a letter which his friends accepted as an instruction to resist any such proposal. This letter determined from fifty to eighty Deputies to vote against the Constitutional Bills, and at first seemed likely to break up the Marshal's Cabinet, which contains at least two avowed partisans of the White Flag. The Marshal, however, who is well aware of the difficulty of selecting a Cabinet from an Assembly fallen into anarchy, contrived for the time to avert the disaster by cobbling his Message,—till the -Sal' attributed a fire in the chimney of the Presidency to the burning of so many rejected rough drafts—and on Thursday, the 3rd inst., despatched to the House a very moderate document indeed. In it the President informs the Deputies that the country greatly desires the organisation which shall give to the Sep- tennate the strength that it requires, and hopes that they will come to an agreement, but adds most significantly that he did not take power to serve the aspirations of any party, that he is simply "a means of social defence and national recovery," that he shall invite the men of all parties to assist him, and that nothing shall discourage him from accomplishing his task. Till November 20, 1880, he will occupy his post with "immutable firmness and scrupulous respect for law."
There can be no mistaking the meaning of these sentences, and little doubt as to the effect they will have upon the action of the Assembly, which they, in fact, reduce temporarily to powerlessness. The Marshal, whether he will or will not obey a vote which establishes a form of Government, while leaving him in possession of his authority, refuses to aid any party, and without his aid no party in the present Assembly is strong enough to realise its desires. The Govern- ment is not strong enough, for without the aid of the Legiti- mists the Cabinet cannot hope to carry the Constitutional Laws it has devised, one of which at all events will be resisted by all fractions of the Left. The Legitimists are not strong enough, for until their King abandons his resolution as to the White Flag they have no support within the Chamber and could not reckon on the obedience of the Army. The Orleanists are not strong enough, for they are paralysed by the adherence of their ahiefs to the principles of the Fusion; and the Republicans are not strong enough, for unless some fraction joins them, they do not possess a majority in the Chamber sufficient to impose its will upon a reluctant Executive.. The Assembly therefore must either go on as before,—that is, settle from day to day everything it can except the permanent form of Gov- ernment, or it must, by dissolving itself, allow the country to send up a Constituent body with a majority strong enough to act. There is, we fear, very little chance that it will adopt this, the manlier and honester alternative. The Marshal, who is intent on preserving all his power, not so much from ambition as from a conviction that he is necessary to the State, is afraid that the next Assembly will be less tractable than the present one, and will therefore not lend the weighty aid of his support to any immediate pro- ject of dissolution. The majority which has hitherto existed is afraid that its own members would lose their seats, and that the constituencies would return a Radical Assembly ; while the Left, which is sincerely in favour of dissolution, is unable to secure it without much help,—help sufficient not only to obtain a majority, but to overcome the resistance of a few Deputies within its own ranks who are reluctant, from personal reasons, to Moe the risks of a general election. The continuance of the personal Septennate without insti- tutions seems, therefore, to be inevitable, or rather would so seem were Marshal MacMalion immortal, or the government in dispute any other than that of France. But the Marshal is not only not immortal, but he is an old soldier who has been severely wounded, and he is liable, like everybody else, to fall suddenly sick. His serious illness, if it lasted only for a few- days, might change the whole attitude of parties in the Assembly, might paralyse his Government, might compel the Conservatives to vote organic laws, or might enable the Left to. insist, as the price of their abstinence from disorder, on the definitive proclamation of the Republic. No plan which any party has at present the power to carry out can obviate this risk, which is inherent in the very existence of the Septennata;. as is also this other,—that Marshal MaeMalion may totally change his mind. He is, no doubt, a tenacious person, who can adhere very strongly to an idea, and the idea of the Septennate has taken a deep hold upon his mind; but he is not a vain man, and though solid, is not like the Comte de Chambord absolutely impenetrable to new facts. Men as tenacious as he have changed their minds before now, and if any argunent, or new fact, or national emotion induced him to think the Republie inevitable, there is 'nothing in his position which binds him not to become in fact what he already is in name,—President of the Republic. Subject to these two risks, however, and that other and greatest disturber of calculations, the fact that- France is France, that is, a country where the only thing certain is the unforeseen, the personal Septennate will go on for at- least another Session.
There is no especial reason that we see why either Frenchmen- or Republicans should regret this protracted delay in arriving at a permanent political arrangement. The delay is unfair to France, which is in the meantime represented by Deputies who do not re- flect her opinions, yet claim the sovereignty because they do, but it is not of necessity injurious either to France or to the Repub- lican cause. Order is maintained, and while order is main- tained, France, with her climate, her fertility, her industrious people, must almost unconsciously repair the ravages of war, and become daily more competent to bear her heavy burden of taxation. Her Deputies misrepresent her, but her electors are yearly becoming more accustomed to the free use of their functions. Her Press is not free, but her public debates are, and the habit of discussion is spreading into the remotest villages, where Government suppresses journal after journal,. only to increase the circulation of those journals of the great cities which cannot be suppressed. Her bureaucracy is oppres- sive, but the first effect of their oppressiveness, as Mr. Hodg- son Pratt explains in another column to-day, is to deepen the desire of the people for really Republican institur '
tions and for that personal liberty of action which hitherto has been denied them by every Government alike. The- French people, supposed to be so fickle, has in it a strange capacity for adherence to arrangements which. have been tested, and if the Republic which, be it remem- bered, is in existence, can but last and maintain order, its continuance may be placed in the French mind as much above discussion as the continuance of the Code Napolion„ of the law of distributions after death, or of the equality of all men before the legal tribunals. There is no chance- that the popular feeling manifested in the Municipal elec- tions will become less deep before it has been gratified, and therefore for the first time in the history of Franca Time fights for the Republic.
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