M. BUFFET.
IT is difficult to read without a smile the solicitations which the Republicans, as well as the Royalists, have addressed to M. Buffet. He was re-elected to the chair of the Assembly
the other day by more votes than he ever received before, and the purpose of the display was to signify a general wish, not that he should remain in his old position, but that he should become Prime Minister. The only party that held aloof from the decision seem to have been the Legiti- mists, who look upon him as a renegade. The Orleanists seemed to think that no other man could so easily keep the Radicals in order ; and the Republicans have spoken as if he were the only available leader who could defend them from the Marshal's habits of command. It is quite natural that the friends of the Comte de Paris should trust the new Minister, for they have tried him in the fire, and have found him as worthy of trust as he is free from the infirmity of small scruples. But that their reliance on his firmness should be shared by tbe Re- publicans is a satire on the vanity of human wishes. When he saw the growing Republicanism of M. Thiers, his strong Royalist sympathies forbade him to accept a seat in the Cabinet which was formed after the signing of the peace. When M. Grevy resigned the Presidency of the Chamber, M. Buffet was placed in the chair, for the very purpose of putting a check on the Repub- lican party. The friends of a Monarchy knew that they could trust his devotion to themselves, and that he was armed with an iron will. Nor were they disappointed. Unlike our own Speaker, the President of the Assembly must keep order by so frequently rebuking unruly debaters, that a discussion often sinks into an angry dialogue between him and some wild or indignant deputy. M. Buffet was admirably fitted for such work. He placed his splendid powers of discipline at the service of the Right, with a cynical openness in which there was a shade of heroism. The admiring Paris Correspondent of the Times says that M. Buffet has " shown himself as inflexible against the exaggerations of the Right as against the vagaries of the Left ;" but the Assembly would greet this handsome tribute with a grim smile. The truth is, that he defied the canons of impar- tiality with a boldness which shocked and amazed every foreign visitor to the Assembly. An eminent Republican has been heard to say that the presence of M. Buffet in the chair was a public scandal. If the Left had been able to turn him out, he would not have sat in his place of authority for twenty- four hours. As it could not muster a sufficient number of votes to banish him, many of its members systematically held aloof from the division each time that he was re-elected. He acted in truth, as the agent of the Royalists. During the debate which overthrew M. Thiers, many of the Orleanists were half afraid to break entirely from the greatest statesman of France, and the wavering and hesitation in their ranks threatened to delay, if not to defeat, the purpose of the Duc de Broglie. But M. Buffet overruled all attempts to put off the decisive moment, and he kept the fatal motion before the Assembly until it was voted. He had been elected to enforce the will of the Royalists, and he did it. Nor, unless he has been foully libelled, was he more impartial during the negotia- tions for the Restoration of the Comte de Chambord. The Paris Correspondent of the Times speaks of him, it is true, as "a calm and almost disinterested spectator" of that attempt ; but M. Buffet's own friends would smile at the amiable fic- tion. And during the debates on the Septennate he flung aside even what small show of impartiality had been left by the briars and the thorns of fierce party fights. If M. Gam- betta or any other Republican leader, dared to interrupt a speaker in the usual fashion of French debate, M. Buffet in- stantly leaped to his feet, furiously rang the bell in his face, rebuked him with the cutting language of which he is a master, and often became passionately angry. The interruptions of the Royalists, on the other hand, were usually met by mild and appealing courtesy. These exhibitions were so frequent and so scandalous, as to leave no room for wonder that M. Buffet was detested by the Republicans more intensely than any other man in France except the Due de Broglie.
And now there is a marvellous change. Even the Radicals would admit that, since neither M. Thiers nor M. Grevy can receive the Vice-Presidency of the Council, they might find many candidates more unfitted for the place than their old and inveterate enemy ; while the milder Republicans are posi- tively willing to trust him. Partially this change has been produced by the very qualities which have given M. Buffet despotic power over the Assembly. No one can look at his pale, finely cut, and highly intellectual, although sinister face, without seeing the lines of contemptuous courage, and of a will at once unbending and aggressive. M. Buffet would not permit himself to be browbeaten by any man in Europe. Even Bismarck might have found a match in sheer force of will, if he had negotiated with him instead of with M. Jules Fevre.
Marshal Macmahon will certainly not be able to give mere words of command to his new Prime Minister. He will find that he must cast off the habits of the drill-ground. He will also learn that he must dispense with the secret guidance of the Duc de Broglie, who remained the real Prime Minister even after he nominally resigned the office. M. Buffet has too domineering a spirit to accept a mere show of power, and so the Duc de Broglie will be peremptorily invited to leave the Marshal alone.
That is a peculiarly strong recommendation to all who sit on the Left, fer they distrust the Duc de Broglie as much as they dislike him. They distrust him because his ecclesiastical sympathies give a peculiarly bitter tone to his Royalism. They distrust him because they think that he has much of the Jesuit in his capacity for intrigue, and in his power of riding into victory on the crest of misunderstandings that seem care- fully planned. But the chief cause of their distrust is the conviction that he would join M. Rouher in the work of destruction, rather than permit the Republic to take root. It is much to disarm such a man, and the Republicans believe that M. Buffet is quite able to accomplish that feat. It is true that he served under Louis Napoleon,—once during the Republic of 1848, when he held the portfolio of Commerce and Agriculture, and once during the brief trial of Imperialist Liberalism, when he was Minister of Finance ; but on each occasion he quarrelled with his master, and resigned his post rather than defend a policy which he condemned. If he did join the Cabinet of 011ivier, it was in the hope that it would begin a time of Ministerial responsibility, as he proved by quitting office in•company with Comte Daru when the Emperor resolved to use - the machinery of a plebiscite. As Minister of Finance, he was a terror to that crew of peculators who fattened on the spoils of the Imperial Exchequer, and he resolutely set his face against the practice of cooking balances by the aid of loans. Thus he left the Imperial Court, as the police magistrates say, without a stain on his character, and it would be difficult to say as much for many servants of Napoleon III. Most of them will bear the grime of the Court on their souls until their dying day, so that nothing but a return of the Empire can save them from being shunned as unclean. Nor has M. Buffet shown any favour to the Imperialists while he has presided over the Assembly. Perhaps he has not been unwilling to let France see that he is made of different stuff from Mr. Rouher. At least, M. Rouher and his little band have to thank him for no courtesy.
There is a still more decisive presumption in his favour. He is believed to agree with the Due d'Audiffret-Pasquier and the Due Decazes in thinking that, for the present at least, the attempt to set up a Monarchy must be abandoned. Much as he would have preferred a Constitutional King, he is too shrewd not to see that the immediate future belongs either to an Empire or the Republic. An Empire would mean a military absolutism for years, if not permanently, and such a system is abhorrent to a man who has been trained to revere the traditions of English Constitutionalism. There remains but the Republic, and the general belief is that he will set himself to make it rigidly Conservative. In truth, he is rather a Conservative than a Royalist. Unlike those zealots to whom devotion to the Comte de Chambord is a religion, bristling with symbols of damnation as well as glowing with hymns of ecstacy, and who disdain the prudential motives of a calculating statesmanship, M. Buffet would prefer a King to a Republic mainly because he believes that a King would be a better bulwark against Radical- ism and Socialism. He fought against Socialism in 1848. It is the spectre which scares Frenchmen of his frigid, sceptical, and intensely respectable temperament. He believes that a Re- public constantly tends to drop into the stream of Radicalism, unless it be lashed fast to the shore of ancient usage. His friends think that if any one can prevent it from drifting, it is he.
The Orleanists are the more eager to get the aid of his strong hand, because they know that they cannot govern with- out the Left Centre, which means M. Thiers, and because they suspect that the Left Centre may soon be dependent on the Left, which means M. Gambetta. They think that the iron will and the vigorous intellect of their own leader may be a match for the craft of the one Republican statesman and the personal force of the other. Nor would Republi- ' cans like M. Casimir Perier and M. Leon Say regret such a success, if it were to stop short of attempts to re- store the Monarchy. They are as Conservative as M. Buffet himself. They are also nervously afraid of their Radical allies. In all but the belief that the best guardian of society would be a King, they are more nearly akin to M. Buffet than to the Radicals. Hence they will not be displeased to see him at the head of the Ministry, if he should give them sufficient guaran- tees of fidelity to the Republic. And on the same conditions, even M. Gambetta and M. Challemel-Lacour may offer a secret welcome to their implacable foe ; for they see that the temper of the most powerful classes makes a Radical or even a Liberal Republic out of the question at present, and they are eager to teach the people that a Republic may be as Conservative as an Empire or a Monarchy. That is incomparably the most im- portant lesson which M. Gambetta can teach the most Con- servative nation in Europe. If once it were firmly planted in the minds of the peasantry and the middle-classes, the Republic would be founded for ever. M. Buffet can help to do that immense service better perhaps than any other man in France, because his great ability and force of character are free from any taint of Clericalism, and are allied to an almost fanatical Conservatism. It will indeed be a strange stroke of irony if a passionate foe of Democratic rule were to help in founding a great Democratic Republic. Yet such an event seems to be so far from improbable, that the complacency of the Republicans is as easy to understand as the wrath of the Legitimists and the Bonapartists.
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