THE COMTE DE PARIS.
A RE not our contemporaries a little hasty in deciding, with such unusual unanimity, that the death of the Comte de Paris makes no difference to the internal politics of France ? If his son is a capable man, it may make a great deal. They forget that not five years ago one- third of France returned Monarchists, and that among Monarchists an able Head of the House of France, who could convince the peasantry that the ancien regime was dead and buried, e ould be by far the most acceptable candidate. He would not be smirched with the memory of Sedan, or be intriguing for a dictatorship. It is true the number of the Monarchists has since declined, though " the King" has still nearly fifty votes in the Chamber of Deputies ; but that has been due to two causes,—the first being the astute diplomacy of Pope Leo XIII. That has succeeded so far admirably, the Republic gaining many votes, and the Papacy, an ally against Italy ; but its effect may not be lasting, for if the Republic and Italy were ever reconciled, the Pope would not love the Republic; while it is quite possible that the rooted hatred of extreme Republicans to the Church, may yet force the Elyse and the Vatican into violent, perhaps irreconcilable, antagonism. The most moderate or subtle of Popes cannot in our day be false to any vital principle of his Church, nor can a French extremist be anything but a potential persecutor. The other cause for the decline of Monarchism, has been that the Comte de Paris was an im- possible man as candidate for the throne of France. The savage diatribe in the Times of Monday, it is true, omits all points in his favour, and exaggerates absurdly his guilt in hiring General Boulanger. It was not a nice thing to do, and not a dignified thing, but if it had succeeded, historians would have pardoned Philip VII. as they pardon the nearly similar transaction which purchased General Monk, A King of France may surely promise rewards to a General who offers to restore his subjects to their allegiance. Nor can we join in the abuse lavished on the Count for making his submission at Frohsdorf. He probably believed, as his grandfather be- lieved, that legitimacy was the better faith, and in any case his business as politician was to unite in one great party all the followers of the House of France. The road to that object lay through Frohsdorf, and he was therefore right in going there, even at the cost of much painful feeling, and some humiliation. It is said that in so doing he threw away the tradition of his House, which is to support constitutionalism, But what if the Comte de Paris was a true Bourbon, thought the Charter an unworkable compromise, and held a wise Kingship to be the best regime for France ? The real objection to the Comte de Paris was that neither in his virtues nor in his failings was he a true Frenchman. He was a hybrid in mental temperament,—a cross between a stiff French Pro- fessor and an Englishman of the class which thirsts for statistics and information. He never, it is said, quite knew either language, but retained in English an accent, w. hile he wrote French in a way which, though accurate, is not the French way. His letters read like translations. He had not a spark of wit, at least in his public utterances, he had no originality, and he never formed a plan which even partially succeeded. Add that he was supposed, like his grandfather, to care too much about wealth, and we have the figure of a man who, if he had all the domestic virtues under the sun, was tco unlike the first Bourbon King to attract France. She can endure all sorts of alliances, even with a bourgeois like Gr6vy, or a respectable engineer like Carnot, but her spontaneous love is for the Bdarnais. The importance of the death of the Comte de Paris is, therefore, that it may remove an obstacle which prevented the Monarchical side of the French character from feeling that under certain circumstances there would be a charm in the old House. The French are very Republican, all the newspapers say ; but suppose for a moment that they thought that in the Head of the House of France they had a man with a genius for war and statesmanship, a man certain to recover the lost provinces from Germany., and to humble England, and how many months would the Republic last then? They will find no such genius ; but if they found in the present " Pretender," or the next, an acceptable man, he may yet have another chance. So long as the Republic flourishes, as we, among others, desire it to flourish, the French will be Republican ; but suppose the Republic comes to disgrace or to defeat. The latter is possible to any State, particularly if it has to fight a machinelike Power like Germany, which is dependent as much upon system as upon military genius for its victories ; and the former is not impossible to France. Her governing men are forced by electoral necessities into spending so much that, rich as France is, they can hardly meet the deficits, and will have to affront the most rooted instincts of their people by an Income-tax ; and they are culpably lenient towards Panamism. Nobody, except one unlucky man who confessed too soon, was punished for the most disgraceful scandal of our age. The people bear with the corruption so long as it is confined to the financing class and its allies in the Chamber, for they hardly understand it, and besides, they expect rascality in Paris ; but let them ever discover that corruption saps the strength of the Army, on which they have expended such a mass of treasure, more than all the tribute-money paid to Ger- many, and the Republic will be shaken to its foundations, if there is no great Republican at hand strong enough to reform abuses and send the guilty to Cayenne, fall for the third time. Then, more especially if the catastrophe is one of defeat, will be the chance of the Bourbons, who alone will seem able to give to a dispirited country the continuous guidance in an in- flexible policy which is the first real use of dynasties. It may take a hundred years of steady effort, should there be a second Sedan, to expand France once more to the Rhine, while to restore her finances may demand precisely that freedom from the local demands of greedy electors which no Parliament can insure ; which we could not insure even here for a week but for our gigantic system of local taxation, which arrests, though it does not extinguish, the pressure on the centre. It is of course possible that even under such circumstances the French Republic might de- velop the necessary man or series of men required to satisfy the needs of the community, and France might give such men a continuous support. She has done so in one matter, the reorganisation of the Army, and she may, do it on a greater scale. We heartily hope she will, for we believe the Republic to be the best form of government for France, and have no wish to see her ruled by a Catholic dynasty which for centuries detested and thwarted and tried to plunder England. But we are not so confident as some observers are that France has given up her trick of a hundred years,—that of repairing defeat by changing, and changing radically, her form of government. Dictator- ships always seem near in France even now, and of all dictatorships a Monarchy, granted an acceptable Monarch, is the easiest to set up for a time. They are, in fact, always near, for the people do not dislike them, and think that if the dictatorships fail they can always try the old experiments again. The Republic is solid enough to look at, and will, no doubt, remain solid till the hour of dang• r arrives ; but if, then, it does not produce a success- ful man content to remain Republican, its solidity may very easily go to pieces. The Bourbons have no chance whatever at present, except possibly of recementing the shattered Monarchical party ; but we do not believe theme chance is over for ever, and therefore cannot agree that the death of the Comte de Paris is an event so entirely without importance in the political world. With him passes away an admirable representative of Orleanism, and Orleanisin has stood as much in the way of Monarchical restoration in France as the House of Orleans ever stood in the way of the elder line.
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