M. de Broglie has been " interviewed " by a
correspondent of the Telegraph, and has made a declaration of his ideas which, and his denials of his reported statements, we have criticised elsewhere. His words amount, on the whole, to this,—that he is still an Orlean- ist, and wants to see a Constitutional Monarchy after the Septennat. It is to get this that he is dismissing mayors, dissolving councils, and centralising power as it was scarcely centralised under Napoleon. He probably believes that should anything happen to the Comte de Chambord, Right, Right Centre, and Left Centre would rush together to set up the Constitutional throne, and he would be right, if only the Assembly represented France. But as it does not, as only Bonapartists and Republicans get in at chance elections, and as he dare not dissolve, he is probably in the wrong, and will find at the great crisis that he has been exerting himself to destroy the last hope of a monarchy in France. That hope could have arisen only from a general conviction that the Orleanists were men like Leopold L, the Constitutional King of Belgium, who told his people he would run for President if they voted a Republic constitutionally, but would shoot them if they voted it by either bullets or bludgeons.
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