TOPICS OF THE DAY.
LE SOUR DE L'AN. TLIE salons of Paris are feverish, for the jour de l'an is approaching. Ever since 1860, when the Emperor with a dozen words sent down the funds in every capital of the Con- tinent, and broke up that icy surface, so smooth and so danger- ously thin, -which is called the European peace, Paris has been unable to divest itself of the belief that a coup de thicitre so exciting and so successful would one day be repeated. The temptation, they say, of the impromptu Congress, with all Europe in attendance, the world listening anxiously for the temptation, they say, of the impromptu Congress, with all Europe in attendance, the world listening anxiously for the telegram, and no possibility of reply is to a monarch who com- bines with unusual power of secrecy unusual love for sudden and striking scenic effects always great, and this year may, they think, prove irresistible. The difficulties of the Empire are, they conceive, thickening fast, the cleus ex machinti must descend, and the clouds could not open with more awe-in- spiring effect than amidst the combined etiquette and joyous- ness of the Imperial receptions held upon New Year Day.
We are to-day in possession of the talk of circles to which the ordinary newspaper correspondent has rarely access, and though we believe their opinion is based as much on a secret longing for sensations —terribly strong in a society which the Empire has, so to speak, becalmed, —as on trustworthy calcula- tion' it is well worth the passing study of those who recognize that Napoleon may at any moment apply a solvent to all diplomatic chemistry. The line of argument current in circles in which argument has not been suppressed by a governing hate of Bonapartism runs much in this direction. The Emperor, say the talkers, stands, and knows that he stands, in the presence of three new dangers, two of them self-created and one the natural effect of eleven years of repression. His address to his Legislature, with its great but dreamy proposal, followed as it was by a series of refusals reverberating from every superior Court, had among his own people two distinct effects. It excited, and very powerfully, the popular imagination. France feels great ideas as no other country feels anything, except, perhaps, menace or new taxation, and Frenchmen had special reasons for feeling this one. The conviction, perfectly just in itself, that the treaties of 1815 were intended to humiliate France, that they had for nearly fifty years operated as a heavy restraint, and that " glory " was impossible until they were swept away, has burnt itself deeply into the mind of France. A vague hatred of those agreements, acknowledged by all classes of educated Frenchmen, by Republicans no less than Imperialists, by M. Thiera as much as Prince Jerome, has extended itself even to the peasantry, whose traditions are of the Grande Armee whose career was arrested in. 1815. Peasants who read nothing else still read the Emperor's speeches, and as they deem him irresistible, the acknowledged leader of the Continent, his pledge that those treaties should end, should be replaced by a new "fundamental pact" more favourable to France and the nationalities, created throughout all France a sense of deep and pleasurable excitement. It was increased by the knowledge that the Congress must first of all take up the question of Poland, upon which the strong feeling always existing had been recently deepened by the unchecked invectives of the Press, and the greedily credited stories of Russian cruelty to the Poles. That feeling might not survive a long and still less a disastrous war, but it was strong enough to authorize the Emperor to begin one,—as he said in his speech he would have done had England consented,—and to obtain such a result of a campaign in peace seemed to most Frenchmen the as plus ultra of strategy. The universal refusal of Europe to obey the summons has disenchanted the populace, and their disappointment, like the hailstorms and every other misfortune, is visited on the Government. The educated classes know the truth in spite of the 3foniteur, and the uneducated, though baffled as to the facts, have an instinctive sense that notre maitre is not so strong as he said he was. "Isolation in Europe," "diplomatic defeat," "dust thrown on the flag," these are to the public mere phrases, but that 3fouravieff goes on, and that Napoleon does not interfere himself, and cannot make Europe interfere for him, this is a fact, and one which the masses by no means accept with pleasure. Napo- leon, who hears from official reports everything that passes in France, the very talk of the wine-shops and gabble of the market-women, knows well how deep is the disappointment, and knows, too that a similar one discredited Louis Philippe for years, and that he, far more than Louis Philippe, cannot afford to fail. Some striking act, some speech which shall set the world in movement, would seem absolutely required to alter the current of national thought, and remove the impression of failure, and that speech must be made just when the world from habit begins to listen.
Again, the Emperor is known to have been startled, not te say shocked, by the result of the elections, a result which has been, so to speak, repeated by the votes given this week in Paris and at Dijon. He suffers, despite his cool judgment, from the temptation of day-dreamers—the disposition to believe that the world is going their way, and he had imagined that the masses of France were reconciled to the Empire. The elections show nothing to the contrary, but they prove that the townsmen throughout the country are thirsty for wider liberty, that the artisans are voting with the rich, and the Emperor, who knows best of all men the gigantic efforts made to divide those classes, is proportionately alarmed. The debates in the Corps Legislatif have proved that the vote of the towns has greatly affected the prestige of the Government, for though the Liberals claim only thirty-five members, yet in the trial debates on the elections eighty-four, some of them nominees, voted "against M. de Persigny." There is a swerve, too, im the tribunals, which are apt to respond to the fluctuations of power in too barometric a style, and editors, for example, pro- secuted by prefects, are to their own amazement getting acquitted. These things move the personal following of the Emperor almost as much as himself, and it is, we believe, correct to affirm that the shrewdest among them, the only one who enjoys some faint share of social liking, has, within the past fortnight, informed the Emperor that if the Legislature is not to become unmanageable, war, or a further grant of internal liberty, are the only alternatives. Liberty is not, when avoidable, exactly the Bonaparte role, the dynasty is still not beyond the reach of internal attack, and war, if circum- stances would only allow, might be the more popular as well as the easier outlet from an unmanageable situation. There is therefore, say the salons, reason for fearing that New Year's Vay will be marked by some Imperial utterance, possibly dangerous, and certainly important.
We admit the full force of these arguments, at least as far as to the influences now working in the direction of some grand and theatric coup, but there are reasons which make such a New Year's gift to Europe seem to men not longing for scenes at least improbable. The Emperor may, and possibly will, take the opportunity of publicly abandoning his scheme of a general Congress, and throwing the responsi- bility on the Powers whose adhesion has been withdrawn ; but this speech by itself would be suggestive of peace. It is only when that which exists is to exist no longer that war becomes imminent, and such a speech would be a confes- sion that that which exists must continue to last. Yet what else is the Emperor to say ? He is known to be bitterly annoyed at the conduct of the Austrian Court, which has saddled him with the Archduke Max, without affording him the support he expected in return; but he cannot a second time menace the ,A4strian representative. There is nothing to fight Austria for, unless, indeed, he draws the sword on all Germany in defence of Denmark, which he seems as yet by no means inclined to do. Popular feeling might back him then, because there would be a chance of the Rhine ; but then France would be in the single position which his devotional study of his uncle's life will not allow him to risk—liable, that is, to be opposed to a coalition. He may menace Russia, and still be in accord with public feeling; but to menace on 1st January when he cannot move till 1st May, and so afford time for all manner of combinations, is not his usual line of action. There is no other enemy to be threatened, professions of amity are pleasant but not scenic, and as to internal liberties, it is not of them that an Emperor of the French will talk to a meeting of foreign Ambassadors. On the whole, admitting, as we have said, the temptations which press the Emperor towards a coup de theatre, the reasonable probability is that he will express nothing beyond a regret that his proposal should not have met a wider and more cordial acceptance.
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