THE POSITION IN FRANCE.

[Faon oun SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.] THE Senate and the Legislative Body have met, and their first debates, impressed with an unwonted vivacity, reveal a situa- tion not a little curious to analyze. They display in fact, better perhaps than anything has hitherto displayed, the profound modifica- tions which in so few years have supervened, if not in the spirit itself of these assemblies, at all events in the conduct of the Govern- ment and in the opinion of the country.

The Empire, it cannot be denied, has entered upon a new phase, and has reached a point which may not improbably seal its future

fate. What it will be to-morrow none can decide. But assuredly we may predict that it will no longer be that which it was yesterday.. To understand thoroughly the present position we must reascend to the origin of the actual Government. It was born of lassitude and fear, a double sentiment which too often follows upon great. na- tional perturbations, political and social, and which involves, as a necessary consequence, the neglect of human worth and a disgust for liberty. Spell-bound amid unwholesome anxieties, the majority in France either willed, or bowed to, the Empire. If men quailed before the Bed Spec Ire, if insensate attacks were made upon the most essen- tial principles of all social order, if commercial interests flagged and material prosperity pined under revolutionary agitation and the uncer- tainty of the morrow, the blame was heaped upon liberty, liberty was taxed with every grievance, real or imaginary, with the ills of the pre- sent and the perils to come. Thus, while celebrated statesmen and ge- nerals were on their viay to exile, while Cayenne and Lambessa were receiving the Republican proscripts carried off unsentenced from their hearths, while the intellectual aristocracy of the country and the Liberals of all parties aided with heavy hearts in the triumph of force and the ruin of their own hopes, almost the whole of the bettermost class, the bulk of the tradesmen and farmers, and the absolutist clergy, hailed the advent ar the Strong Band (du _Pouvoir Port) employed, according to Louis Napoleon's own expression, in "re-establishing the pyramid on its basis."

The programme of the new Empire tallied with its birth. In the in-

terior an immense development of public wealth, and an era of mate- rial prosperity hitherto unprecedented, was offered in exchange for the tribune overthrown, for thought enslaved, and for the annihilation of individual liberty. To the populations alarmed by the phantom of Socialism they promised the re-establishment of order in men's hearts not less than in the public thoroughfares. Before the eyes of the clergy a looming restoration of the old alliance between the throne and the altar was held up as the price for their good offices. " L'Em- pire c'est la pail" were the words uttered by the Prince-President at Bordeaux. To maintain that peace, to realize externally as well as internally his conservative programme, the Emperor sought, in pre- ference, the alliance of absolutist courts. He solicited the friendship of the Czar Nicholas by extolling the merits of the 2nd December. He placed in his Cabinet the portrait of the young Emperor of Austria, whom he lauded with affectation as a disciple of his own policy..

An interval of more than ten years divides us from that period.

And how have those promises been fulfilled? The Empire engaged to increase the national wealth, and founded its claims upon the pro- motion of material interests. At this moment all commercial and industrial enterprises languish, the. public debt has grown in

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alarmg proportions, the budget is defaced by a deficit which will hardly be made up even by the creation of new imposts. Order was to have reigned at home and peace abroad. Yet never within a long space of time has more anxiety prevailed, or the future been more uncertain. Religious quarrels add to the com- plications of political difficulties. Two great wars, such as we have not witnessed for more than half a century, have drained the gold and the blood of France, without solving any one of the problems to which they have given rise. The absolute sovereigns are irritated, liberal Europe suspicious. Foreign nations no longer heed the word of France, and no man would venture to affirm that within a year we shall not find ourselves embroiled in all the vicissitudes of a Euro- pean war. But there is one point, it must be admitted, on which the Empire has been faithful to its origin and to its engagements. Looking at the annihilation of our liberties, the work of the find of December abides in its integrity. The Government declared last year that it regarded as one of its fundamental institutions the law of general safety—the well-known Loi des Suspects passed under the Second Empire. A few days ago, by the mouth of M. Baroche, the Government announced to the Senate its intention of maintain- ing, as a normal rule, the law which hands over the press to the good pleasure of the Administration. The elections are still conducted under the pressure of the prefects, and the trial of the Mayor of Cassiart has lately added another page to the history of universal suffrage under an absolute power. Finally, we may judge by the recent letter of the Emperor on the subject of the dotation of Count Palikao, how far it enters into his views to respect the free votes of the representatives of the country. To those who may plead in answer the unquestionable extension given to the attributions of the Legislative Body by the decrees of the 24th November, 1860, and of the 14th November, 1861, we reply that in order to be efficacious such reforms imply an enlightened and independent Legislative Body, and that they must remain a dead letter so long as France shall not have regained a free press and bond ficle elections. Thus, on the one hand, the material advantages pledged to follow the coup d'Ettst of the 2nd of December have not been secured to France; and on the other hand, the liberties of which she was robbed by the coup d'Elat have not been restored to her. The friends of

liberty remain the adversaries of the Empire. Day by day the Con- servatives, at all hazards, are alienated from the Imperial rule.

This situation is one of extreme gravity for the present Govern- ment. In the face of the inextricable difficulties into which it is plunged by its foreign policy, and of the boundless financial em- barrassments created by its lavishness and improvidence, it seeks for a staff to lean upon, and everywhere the staff turns into a broken reed.

The ancient monarchy, in its .great crises, invoked the aid of the States-General. Will the Empire make an appeal to the spirit of Liberty? and will it attempt, by a sudden return to parliamentary institutions, to let the country itself solve its own problems?

Of all hypotheses this appears to as the most unlikely. All the men who have made or sustained the Empire know full well that on the day when the light penetrates into their secret actions and lives, they will lose power and fortune for ever. They repel control and liberty as it danger personal to themselves. The Emperor, on his part, contemplates with a deep repugnance and a supreme contempt the function of a constitutional sovereign; nor would he accept, at any price, responsible ministers imposed upon his choice by the vote of a Chamber. The memory of the manner of tutelage, forced upon him in bygone days by the leaders of the majority of the Legislative Assembly, has not vanished from his mind, and, to all appearance, it never will.

Apart, then, from an hypothesis which we regard as the most un- attainable of utopias, the Empire has now to choose between two courses, and, in the councils of the Emperor, two conflicting influences are fighting for supremacy. Imperial policy has hitherto balanced between the two. But a crisis has arrived, and circumstances now compel a choice. Come what may, however, we certainly are uncon- cerned in the result. Whichever side prevails, the Liberal cause has nothing to gain. • The passionate discussion which arose in the Senate on the pro- posed Address is but an episode in the struggle. The cause lay not merely as a superficial observer might. have imagined, in the division of opinion regarding the Italian question. The point was to ascer- tain if the Empire, breaking irrevocably at home and abroad with the Conservative policy so loudly proclaimed at its birth, and hencefor- ward treating as enemies its friends of the day before, would appeal at home to the democratic forces, and abroad to the principle of nationality and the spirit of conquest, and thus try the perilous course of a revolutionary dictatorship. This new attitude is vehemently combated by the men who compose the majority of the Senate. An equal repulsion, but less vehemently displayed, is manifested in the Legislative Body. The bulk of this Assembly is fundamentally Con- servative, hostile to a policy of adventure, well-meaning, take it all in all, in the lowest sense of the word well-meaning (honnete), and assum- ing that mere uprightness of intention supposes neither a great deli- cacy of conscience nor a great elevation of the moral sense. The ideal of a deputy of the Legislative Body has been tolerably well defined,— Vir bonus tacendi peritus. But these upright people almost all have found their way into the Chamber with the help and the very active protection of the Administration, and, saving a few honourable excep- tions, we need not expect that any disapprobation they may feel will find very energetic expression. Peace without, economy within, such is the programme of this Conservative fraction. It is also that which M. Fould would carry out, could he wholly obey the ten- dencies of his own mind. But M. Fould possesses neither the po- litical genius nor the high moral authority which the part of a Colbert or a Turgot would require. When we look at the difficulties of every kind which lie in his way, and, moreover, judge the future by the light of the past, we are convinced that the Nether of the Empire, as he is called by his admirers, must fail in his enterprise.

Be this as it may, would a return to the Conservative policy be possible now ? This is a question which we do not undertake to answer. The Empire has gone so far in a contrary direction that it may find the task of retracing its steps difficult indeed. Nothing can restore to the Conservatives the confiding trust of early days, the blind enthusiasm, cooled down by too many deceptions. Finally, the Emperor is thoroughly aware that the restoration of the finances would rob him of those means of action, which he can least avow, but on which he most relies, and that in a few years a prolonged peace would revive in men's minds the taste for liberty,—dangers which strike him more forcibly than any others. It is thus rendered probable that the Emperor has no course left but to enter resolutely -upon the policy pressed upon him with some difference in detail, both by Prince Napoleon and M. de Persigny. You need only read a few numbers of the Opinion Nationale* to know the programme of the Imperial Densocracy or of the Democratic Empire. lJnflinching hostility to the clergy, a system of imposts falling exclusively on the rich, certain applications of the Socialist theories which the Emperor has personally at heart, the vindication of the natural frontiers, war on the banks of the Rhine —these are the objects of the Imperio-democratic party, shadowed clearly enough by .Prince Napoleon in his last speech to the Senate. But this would be staking their all on the venture. Yet it is not impossible that Napoleon ill., at a loss how to extricate himself from the situation which he himself has created, may make up his mind to run all risks. But assuredly neither the constitutional Liberals, nor the better principled members of the Republican party,

* --the journal which has just received a warning for an article con- taining "injurious expressions tending to insult the great body of the State,"—whence it would appear that the Emperor is not yet, at all events, prepared to abandon the Conservative policy, or to adopt that of Prince Napoleon.—En.

would follow him in his enterprise. He might, indeed, find a fulcrum and a momentary impulse in the democratic passions of the masses. Such a policy, if directed by a man of superior ability, might for a time give the Empire an apparent and factitious life, and precipitate France and Europe into frightful catastrophes. But were a Cromwell or a Richelieu himself to conduct the move-, ment, instead of the feeble hand of M. de Persigny, the Empire could not be saved. Bankruptcy within, coalitions without, would be the last word of the system. Nor could any reliance be placed upon the disinterested support of those masses whose savage passions had been catered -to, and republican demagogy would lose no time in claiming the heritage of Imperial democracy. In a word, the Empire seems to stand face to face with perils which no human power can avail to conjure. Hitherto it has been able to tack between two reefs. The time has come when it, appears fated to strand upon one or the other. Let us add, for° the eternal condemnation of despotism, that the dangers with which it is threatened are of its own exclusive creation, and that it will perish by its own hand. The country is uneasy, but as yet shows no sign of resistance. The languishing state of material interests is giving birth, however, to a craving for less control. But the love of liberty, once so ardent, is not yet reawakened. The dangers which we describe are scarcely realized. The Empire is upheld, nor has anything been done to shake it. But the absolute power, which was to have secured tranquillity and peace for ever upon the grave of liberty, will fall under the throes of its own folly and of its ruinous