TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE AUGURIES FOR FRANCE.
IT is scarcely to be numbered among the good auguries for the Emperor of the French that M. Guizot has become his patron, if not exactly his friend. It is still less so when
the language of discriminating appreciation which M. Guizot employs is so very skilfully adapted to bring the French Emperor to the level of that cautious and prudent, but, as it proved, shortsighted ruler of whom M. Guizot was the most trusted counsellor. Look how he praises the Emperor ! In 1855, M. Guizot tells us, while the Crimean War was still waging, he bad the honour of an interview with the Emperor on business connected with the Academy. "My academic duties fulfilled, the Emperor was good enough to detain me, and talk over the state of affairs in the Black Sea. He showed himself preoccupied, above all, concerning the issue of the
war, the various ways there might be of getting out of it, and the diplomatic arrangements it would be necessary to take, in order to prevent the necessity of beginning so risky an undertaking over again. I was struck with the perplexity of his mind, with his prudent anxiety, with his moderation, I will take the liberty of saying, with the modesty of his desires and views. I left him carrying with me the conviction that if he had readily entered upon war, he would still more readily make peace. I do not think that the Italian War, with the grave embarrassments which attended and have followed its successes, or the Mexican War, with its lamentable issues, can have greatly strengthened in the Emperor Napoleon's heart a taste for war and for the problems which it leaves behind it. I know not whether he still retains all that faith in his destiny, all that confidence in his fortune which for a long time characterized his life. The experience of disappointments and reverses is a heavy burden to bear, even for the most obstinate optimists or fatalists." M. Guizot carefully employs, it will be observed, in his diagnosis of the Emperor's character and probable moral condition, terms which point to his own pro- fessed expectation of continued peace ; and this is, indeed, the drift of the article which has been read with so much eagerness in France. But surely we are not fanciful in detecting beneath the experienced old statesman's hopeful auguries a vein of subdued irony, not perhaps intentionally, but unquestionably adapted to render the pacific policy which he hopes and predicts even less easy, or rather we should say even more difficult, to the Emperor than it was before ? The stress he lays on the Emperor's "perplexity," "prudent anxiety," and on "the modesty of his desires" under adverse circumstances, has certainly a flavour of sarcasm,—the more, that these are precisely the expressions which might properly be applied to the unfortunate Louis Philippe, to whose government it can be by no means pleasant for any administration so splendid, and so greedy of splendour, as the Emperor's, to be in any way likened. What M. Guizot in effect says to his country- men is this,—" Be hopeful for peace, for the Emperor has always been perplexed, not to say dismayed, during the suspended crisis of a great anxiety ; and as for his reliance on his destiny, that cannot possibly have survived the reverses and failures he has experienced." That these things, unsaid, have had their weight with the Emperor on the side of peace we do not doubt ; that the public saying of them by an eminent Frenchman like M. Guizot will serve, so far as it goes, to lessen the moral weight of such con- siderations with the Emperor, and to render it more difficult for him to hold to peace than it was before, we doubt quite as little. An Emperor openly depreciated and held up to the public by an eminent adversary as vacillating in moments of danger feels the temptation still more strongly to undertake great and dazzling enterpiizes.
The great reasons for anxiety as to war are now two- fold, both, however, springing from one root, —the declin- ing popularity of the Imperial Government, which has lost prestige with the people both on account of the Mexican disas- ter and on account of the Prussian aggrandizements. From this arises, first, an uneasy feeling on the Emperor's part that if he wishes to secure his dynasty, to leave his throne to his son, he must do something to regain the prestige he has lost.,—and, secondly, a restlessness among the masses of the people, who, however much they may, on the whole, desire peace, yet in exact proportion as they reject the thought of a dangerous war, let off their displeasure through the safety-valve of discontent with their Government—and in exact proportion as they are disposed to defend or extol their Government, feel themselves
compelled to promise and prophesy for it a career of ex- ternal successes in which past reverses may be forgotten.. Thus it may be true, as the Pall Mall said in its able article of Tuesday, that it is the personal government of France which creates at least half the danger, since no mask who has held the position once held by Napoleon III. could bear to leave a much less magnificent and much less secure sceptre to his son without a struggle of some sort to regain. what he had lost ; and it may also be true, as is asserted in a remarkable passage in Thursday's Standard, that the mass of the people are the true springs of the danger,—that "they are uneasy because they are eager for the worst ; they are full of suspicions because they know what is in their own mind." No doubt the simple truth is that the people of Prance, both the lovers of peace and the lovers of war alike, are sore, dis- satisfied with recent events, and dissatisfied with their Govern- ment for its inability to heal that dissatisfaction. Those who wish for peace, yet wish,—we think we may say like M. Guizot, —for peace very different from the existing peace, and wilt leave no peace to the Government so long as it does not feed: their impatient craving for a more splendid position. They do not like what M. Guizot mischievously terms the "modesty- of its desires,"—and the very phrase will, perhaps, goad theni into clamouring for evidence of other desires that may be almost called immodest. On the other hand, those who wish for- war, for the most part glorify their Government, but glorify it only on the ground that it is both able and ready to secure to- France great European compensations for recent events. Thus the French people at present seem pretty nearly divisible into two classes, those who protest against war by the Government but make war on the Government, and those who extol the- Government to the skies because it is ready for war, and on the hypothesis that it intends war.
No one can deny that such a situation in France is very- critical,—the more so that the Army receives the Emperor with cries of " Vive Ia guerre!" and "Au Rhin!" and that the King of Prussia, while expressing his own belief that war is not imminent, thinks it necessary to add that it is not imminent- because his own subjects are so ready to fight. In fact, it is - a situation in which, as Mr. Henley said the other day of the political situation in England, the whole ground is strewn with gunpowder, which any accident may kindle into a con- flagration. At the same time, it is at least some comfort to know- that that accident has not yet happened, and that Napoleon, on whom almost everything depends, is certainly not the man to- precipitate it. His "prudent anxiety," the "modesty of his desires," even his belief in his own destiny, are all in favour- of waiting for a sign. He has ever felt disposed for delay, even at the last moment. He hesitated long before the Coup. d'Etat, and if the best accounts may be trusted, hesitated' even after it was far too late to draw back. He hesitated long- before the Italian war, and indulged poor Lord Malmesbury with hopes,—not, perhaps, stronger than at some moments he- entertained himselt—that it might really be averted. He hesitated long about the Mexican expedition, though, unfor- tunately for him, he finally pushed on when we stepped back. He hesitated long as to interfering in the American troubles, and, fortunately for him, hesitated till fortune had declared for the North. He hesitated last year about the Luxemburg quarrel, and hesitated till he found a fair excuse for stopping altogether. He is the last statesman in Europe who, even if his mind leaned more and more to war, would precipitate the without some significant signal of destiny, as he would regard it, some sign to him that he must move or else raise a hurricane against him in France. TheEmperor has one of those long-balancing minds which, on a great issue, is scarcely ever satisfied as to. which way the scale really turns. Indeed, if he sees it definitely turning one way, he is almost disposed to give an artificially greater weight to the opposite considerations, and, so to say, to impart a little temporary pressure, almost out of his own will, to the ascending scale. As we know, therefore, that he has not at present made any of the final preparations for war ; as the troops brigaded at Chalons have been disem- bodied, and there are no active preparations at Toulon, Brest, and Cherbourg ; as the reserves are not called out, and the, recruits of the two contingents voted this year have not as yet been ordered to join, we may fairly assume that war and peace still hang in the balance. His refusal to say anything to the "troops at Chalons lest it should be strained by the papers into an augury of war, is not so dangerous a sign as it might seem. If the Army is really eager for the fight, as all &counts agree to assert, and the Emperor knows not
how soon he may want the Army, he would very naturally shrink from telling them positively that there was no pro- bability of any demand for their services. A very positive assurance of peace might have disgusted the Army to a degree which the hesitating Emperor would have felt to be dangerous. And complete silence is, at least, less ominous than warlike speech. On the whole, we believe that the condition of France is very unfavourable to continued peace, but that it will need a definite spark somewhere to cause war, and there is some reason to hope that that spark may be delayed till the chapter of accidents introduces some totally fresh conditions. The unification of North and South Germany would, of course, be such a spark, but the unification of North and South Germany does not seem very close at hand.
In the meantime, why should England be reproached with apathy, as it is by the able writer in the Pall Mall, because, seeing this dangerous situation, she says little about it ? After all, is not that precisely the wisest policy to pursue ? There is no quarrel to settle, no difference to adjust, no ease to argue, nothing practical to do. The danger is one we can neither fly from nor diminish. If we are compelled to live over a powder magazine, what is the use of talking of nothing but the powder, and the results of its ignition ? To live the best life you can and forget the powder, except when you have got matches or lights in your hand, is surely the wisest of all courses. "Ilfaut mourir " is all very well now and then ; but as the sole conversation of living men,—and the monks of La Trappe, it is said, use speech only to pronounce those words,—it is not only monotonous but uninstructive, and far from the best preparation for a life beyond. Besides, in this case, though war is a terrible probability, it is by no means a necessity. While the Emperor hesitates, Europe lives ; and as all life is change, time may gradually either assuage the French discontent which is at the bottom of the danger, or divert it to some definite channel in which it will threaten less to Europe. If the French papers would talk less constantly of war, the danger would be rather less than greater. If the English papers talk more of it, the French papers will certainly not talk less. On the whole, not apathy, but self-restraint, roay be the true interpretation of our comparative reticence.
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