A great nation, universally unsettled, and handed over to little
men—that is the condition of France in her tribulation ; a con- dition never more forcibly illustrated than by the conduct of the Government in the new Ministerial crisis. The success of the So- cialist candidates imposed some change upon the President ; and after talking of the largest, even including his own resignation, he has changed one Minister ; having taken into the Government M. Baroehe, noted as the prosecutor of the July insurgents. It is a Government of reaction in the shape of prosecutions ; whereof plen- tiful earnest is given in the prosecution of newspapers. The small and malignant agitation of the Government is contrasted with the self-possessed quiescence of the revolutionaries, the Soci- alists ; who give their name to the whole Anti-Government party. The fact is, that in the absence of earnest opinions, the Socialists 'take a lead solely by the weight and influence of a monopoly in that line. Socialism cannot be enacted offhand, and it is therefore in the stage of abstract opinion ; but it animates men with a comparatively consistent doctrine and an unselfish activity, and thus it commands the esteem of others who are glad to fight under so respectable a banner against the political scep- ticism in which the official corruption of Parisian coteries has flowered. Meanwhile incidents occur which show the precarious state of public tranquillity. Under cover of the dominant public opinion, a cure instructs his congregation that the poor have a right to seize the property of the rich.The majority of the As- sembly connives at the conduct of a journal which publishes an accusatory list of the voters on the Socialist side. And Ministers keep up their little prosecutions, like a provisional government of parish-beadles attempting ta-rule a Ration in,smothered•anarchgf:
