THE FRENCH IMPEACHMENT. T HE French Government and Assembly are out
of humour with logic, and a very good sign it is that they are so. They are not disposed to impeach the Administration of the Doc de Broglie, but they are disposed to go as far as they can in invective against that Administration, without impeaching it. This is obviously not very logical and not quite fair. If the Government to be condemned had been shown to have be- trayed its trust, which is what M. Rameau's order of the day asserts, it should have been impeached, and not merely censured, for though bad policy may be only censurable, any- thing like real treachery should be impeached. If the crime were only suspected, and public policy requires that it should not be further investigated, then equity requires that you should not assume the guilt which you take all the benefit of ignoring. Obviously, the fair and logical policy would have been either to impeach the late Government and abide by the judgment of the Senate ; or to limit the vote to one of censure on its policy, instead of stigmatising it, as M. Rameau's resolu- tion does, with a criminal character that remains unproved. But the French Government and Assembly did not like either of these courses. They were too prudent for the former, and too sensitive to the irritation pro- duced by the publication of the Committee's Report for the latter. So they did just what a British House of Commons would probably have done under like circumstances, and what a French Assembly has very rarely done,—they gave loose to their temper so far as it was safe, but declined to be drawn into a long and serious prosecution, which would have revived all the political hatreds of the last nine years, inflamed the passions of the mob, set town and country once more at variance, and deferred indefinitely the revival of commerce and the reform of the administration. We cannot approve the via media,—the unverified invective,—which is preferred by the Government to either an ordinary political censure, or a formal arraignment for crime. But we are not very sorry to find that the French Deputies are capable of these failures at once in logic and in impartiality. French logic is apt to be malicious and exacting ; and yet complete impartiality might involve a somewhat dangerous reaction. We regard what the Deputies did on Thursday in the sort of light in which we regard a man's swearing when, if he did not swear, he might be in some danger of striking a blow. It is vely wrong, of course ; and it would be much better if he would avoid it altogether. But as he cannot, and the result of trying to avoid it might be a sudden outburst of inward steam that would be much more dangerous, it is not to be re- gretted that he should swear, rather than run the risk of some- thing worse, by keeping too heavy a weight on the safety-valve. M. Rameau's motion, carried by 240 votes against 157, seems to us a via media for which there is no moral or intellectual justification. Still, if it be a mode of doing wrong which practically supplanted some much worse mode of doing wrong, we may be well satisfied with the result. A man who subdues his passion from dangerous deeds to extravagant words, is in a fair way to mend. A French Assembly which from a sensational policy, has toned itself down to mere sensa- tional words, is in a fair way to represent respectably enough the homely prudence of the French peasantry.
The real truth of the matter on which M. Brisson's Com- mittee proposed to found its impeachment, we shall, of course, now never know. But the shrewdest of the French journalists evidently think that a deliberate breach of the Con- stitution was never decided upon, and probably never was entertained by the Marshal. What the Due de Broglie, no doubt, did deliberately approve, when he recommended the Marshal to form a Government of Affairs, and to govern with- out the concurrence of the Assembly, was, we imagine, not a breach of the Constitution, but a very strained interpretation of it in the sense most opposed to the popular wish. There is no doubt that the present Constitution of France, drawn up as it was by a very Conservative body, does admit of constructions which, to any one imbued with the principles of popular government, would seem in the highest degree re- actionary. And as for the military preparations, they may well have been intended simply to meet the explosion of popular wrath which must have followed the disclosure that the Marshal intended to dissolve again, and perhaps also to summon the next Parliament to meet in some re- tired district, where it would have been even less ex- posed than at Versailles to the impulses of popular opinion. To our minds, the Due de Broglie, though a most dangerous political counsellor, was dangerous more for his lawyer-like way of finding loopholes in the Constitu- tion for practically unconstitutional conduct, than for the sort of audacity which a French Strafford would have brought to bear to tear to pieces the Constitution. He always showed a very keen and attorney-like eye for the worst meanings into which the letter of the law might easily be wrenched, though he never, we imagine, contemplated for a moment, an open breach with the law. And as for the Rochebouet Ministry, no doubt it was really formed on the Due de Broglie's advice. Nor did the Marshal, we believe, ever entertain any serious intention of going beyond the scope of the Due de Broglie's advice. Of course, we may be mistaken in this interpretation of the recent disclosures, but this seems to us the most probable interpretation ; nor do we see that the Committee succeeded in discovering any new facts tending to prove that the military preparations were made with the view of tearing the Constitution to pieces, rather than with the view of controlling the popular indigna- tion which would have been certain to follow the public avowal that the Marshal intended to press for a second dissolution. Of course, all the preparations made with a view to suppress a very natural and righteous outburst of popular anger would have been made secretly, and would have been attended with that half-consciousness of conspiracy, which seems to betray itself in some of the cipher telegrams exchanged between General Rochebouet and General Ducrot.
On the whole, though M. Waddington did not take a very heroic line, in supporting the half-and-half policy of a con- demnation without a trial,—which is what M. Rameau's reso- lution virtually amounted to,—it is not unsatisfactory to see the heroic line less in favour in France than it was. Hitherto at all events, political heroism in France has been too often closely associated with political violence. And before it can come to be associated with austere political sobriety, we must expect to see French Governments pass through that inter- mediate stage in which they compensate themselves for their moderation in conduct, by indulging themselves in somewhat unreasonable and unreal, though not unnatural, declamation.
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