TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE ORLEINIST DECISION. THE Orleanists have decided to enter the lists against the Napoleonic rergime ; consequently Orleanism is dead in France. That is the judgment of many thoughtful French- men, and the apparent paradox has its usual share of truth. Weary alike of inaction and of silence, seeing no hope while Napoleon lives, and fearful, when he is dead, of having, un- armed, to meet Republicans panoplied in fanaticism, the more active chiefs of the party have held a formal debate. Should they or should they not abandon their policy of abstention, re-enter public life, and, if they cannot change the regime, at least endeavour by criticism to render it more supportable ? The meeting was held at the house of the Duke de Broglie, head of one of the very few among the older houses of France which saw no dishonour in serving the country, although she had in her wilfulness accepted Louis Philippe as King ; and the debate seems to have grown somewhat warm. M. Thiers, as might be expected, took the affirmative side. Employed all his life in disseminating the Napoleonic faith, he can hardly be expected to feel disgust because it has become, if not the national, then at least the official creed. Himself the man who revivedBonapartism by importing the founder's bones, he can scarcely murmur because peasants choose to regard them as sacred relics. Never very conspicuous for his scruples, he is consumed with that thirst for affairs which is so often the peculiarity of unscrupulous men, and pines in an inaction which will make him old before the expected future arrives. He contended for public life, wished his party to vote and to stand, to court the electoral suffrage and swallow the Impe- rial oath. The policy of emigration, he said, had, since 1789, always failed, and what was abstinence, after all, but emigration without its discomforts. M. Dufaure, conscience of his party, opposed ; he could not utter an oath, however formal, or however oppressive, which he did not intend to observe. He recommended abstention, not as a matter of policy, but as the only mode in which an upright man could protect his personal conscience. Rigid M. Guizot was for once without a doctrinaire speech, wavered, and doubted, and drew distinctions, and seemed, says the party organ, to think he could not enter the lists ; but if a district elected him he might feel it right to sit. That notion is so like M. Guizot, the man who, professing liberalism, strove to pack a chamber for Louis Philippe; who, talking always of politi- cal purity, managed the Spanish marriages ; who, Pro- testant in his professions, holds that religion can only be saved by maintaining the oppression of Rome. He will not soil his conscience by asking electors for votes; but if they give them, he thinks it might be upright to accept. Chastity, one perceives, is acknowledged to be a grand virtue, but then if one is ravished, why —. As usual, men listened without believing, and the meeting, which included all sections of the opinion dominant in the last reign, agreed with but two dissents to vote and to stand as candidates in the coming electoral strife. And therefore, as we have said, many Frenchmen believe that Orleanism has run its course. As to the expediency of the course sanctioned by the ma- jority there can be little hesitation. M. Thiers was right upon grounds broader than those which his instinct as histo- rian led him to prefer. Abstention, though dignified with the name of a policy, is in truth only a mood,—a pout, not a political plan. It has been tried all over the continent, and once in the history of Great Britain, and it has never suc- ceeded yet. The mass of mankind,—and it is only by their action on the MGM of mankind that free states- men can exercise power—will always instinctively feel that the nation is above an idea. There is something, perhaps, of elevation in the Legitimist who says, "I cannot accept of office, for I am devoted to the race of Saint Louis ;" but it is elevation of sentiment merely, not to be compared as a principle with that which sent Blake to conquer for a chief whom he detested, but who ruled the country he loved. The masses do not condemn, but they punish, nevertheless; for they simply forget the men who, capable of serving the State, refuse unless they approve of the chief whom the State has selected. The Be Rohans who served as privates when Italy was to be freed, tried to reconcile the two claims, and won- dered that Europe did not approve what they thought a chival- ric compromise. They forgot entirely that the man who, having the power to be an efficient captain, chooses to be an inefficient corporal, is in principle the same as the man who cuts off a finger in order to avoid conscription. That also might be justifiable ; but the man who does it must be content with his own approbation. In the special circumstances of the Orleanists there is a special expediency in action. The Republicans who, like M. Favre, prefer France to any idea, can be met by official pressure, and by that secret dislike which the clergy feel for men who, even when playing their game, are still beyond their authority. Their numbers the Court can restrain, but the Orleanists form a danger. They are all leaders. They have men among them, and in France. who can administer as well as speak. They do not excite the dread of the property-holders or the antipathy of the curls, and yet they, like the Bonapartists, acknowledge the revolu- tion. Above all, the prefects are slow to oppress them, some because social ties are stronger than those of office, others out of a secret fear that when the day of reckoning arrives Orleanists may be found at the top. In the Chamber, too, they would be singularly formidable, ; for they can speak, and speak freely, within any conceivable rules of debate. It is easy to silence a mere Republican, for one can ac- cuse him of hostility to property, or religion, or the buttons on Senators' coats ; but what could M. de Morny do with M. Guizot, or what will Europe say, should he ring his bell against Thiers ? The re-entrance of the Orleanists on public life is the signal for an effective opposition, for a new and powerful use of the last privilege left to Frenchmen— the right of public debate. To the opponents of CEesarism that intelligence can only be cordially welcome.
And yet, is there no truth in the paradox we have quoted at the head of these lines ? There never yet was a great cause which could be served by a great lie, and the question is still undetermined whether the oath, without which no candidate can appear, does not to an Orleanist involve one. We do not wish to strain the meaning of oaths, as M. Dufaure seems to do. An oath of fidelity to a Bonaparte makes no man a Bona- partist. If the country should ultimately expel him, no Orleanist will thereby be bound not to accept his successor. Still less does it bind M. Thiers not to agitate for the develop- ment, or improvement, or even the reconstruction of the exist- ing constitution of France. He may, for instance, make the Legislature the first power in the state without a fear of forswearing himself. But the oath, if oaths mean anything, binds him to accept in peace the dynasty to which he swears allegiance, to cease to intrigue for its removal, to abstain in the hour of its trial from throwing his strength against it. If it is kept in this sense, the Orleanists cease to exist as partizans of the House of Orleans. If it is not kept—and it will not be—then the party will stand for tho second time before France as men who have betrayed the King they pro- fessed to serve, and who prefer the intellectual conviction which may change to principles which are eternal. If they simply accept Napoleon, as Englishmen, for example, would do, because they prefer their country to any conceivable ruler, they are not only justified in their act, but are in the clear path of duty. But the moral instinct of mankind will never ap- prove of allegiance sworn only to strive the harder against those whom the oath is imposed to protect. The good may condone the offence, but it is only as one pardons the dead.
Of course it is a horrible thing that despotism should have a resource like this, that it should be able to offer to freemen the alternatives of perjury or acquiescence. It is hard to imagine wickedness greater than the wilful antithesis thus established between patriotism and morality, the slow debauchery of the national conscience thus sanctioned by formal law. But so long as the oath is voluntary, as it is not imposed, as on con- scripts, by irresistible force, so long must the moral obligation remain ; and the party which neglects it, prepare for the oblivion which punishes while it condones the traitor, whose treason was for a noble end.
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