STTBDIVISION OF POWER IN FRANCE.
VRESIDENT Bonaparte is not only a magistrate, he is also a national BYmptom : the peculiar and isolated position arrogated for him is not only an anomaly in policy, but it also indicates an anomalous state d Politics in France, to render such a position possible. Certain ata advanced by his friends are not to be denied-. He was elected ,Y the universal suffrage of the entire kingdom, and must there- -lore be taken to represent the people : he has been opposed by all 4rlitival parties, and he has of late placed himself still more ab-
solutely in opposition to all parties ; of them, therefore, he stands independent. The distinction which he draws between the election of the Assembly and his own seems to be—that whereas the legis- lators represent the several parts and classes of France, he repro-. Bents France as a whole, one and indivisible : they represent the diverse views, the conflicting interests, the competing influences ; he, the national feeling, the power of the whole, and the will. It is theirs to excogitate the statutes, his to mould the action of the country. It suits the French genius to put things into that kind of formula with a superficial aspect of analytical classification and geometrical exactitude ; and President Bonaparte's retrospective scheme of his own election is as plausible and as picturesque as most of the ideal formulas current in Paris: but, supposing it to have any substantial truth and force in the conduct of rench politics, the practical significance of such a scheme is not what its authors would desire nor its enemies dread.
Louis Napoleon professes to rely upon the people, and to be in- dependent of all political parties. In other words, he relies solely upon the rural classes and the working classes of the towns, and such of the bourgeoisie as are not appropriated by any of the poli- tical parties. The political parties consist of the several pro- fessional statesmen, the classes who have been in office and adhere from conviction or speculative interest to the several statesmen, and of such of the educated classes as take an ac- tive theoretical or practical share in the working of politics. In France, the whole political world is divided into parties ; and al- though the word " party" is taken to be synonymous with faction, as signifying men banded for personal interests—although in France even more than in this country mercenary politicians have seized upon the opinion which has held any given party together as a mere pretext and instrument to work out their own selfish ends— the fact remains, that every opinion, with the personnel organized to carry it out in action, is to be classed among some of the parties of the day. So that to describe the President as independent of all parties, is to say that he is isolated and exiled from the whole class of educated, active, and trained politicians. He relies u the plebs of France as contradistinguished from its poptdus. Now in no country of Europe is the common people available as a handy political engine : it is on the whole inert, slow, cumbrous, uncer- tain in action, intermittent, intractable, difficult to keep astir ; and the common people of France has been no exception to that rule. The peasantry of La Vendee has stood by its principles—but could only adopt a Bonaparte as a pis-aller ; the populace of Lyons has taken a turbulently restless part in politics—but Louis Napoleon would scarcely count it amongst his fast friends : meanwhile, the bulk of the people has seldom been forward to move at all, and has not originated any movement whatsoever.
That Louis Napoleon should have been able to establish such a position, however, indicates a serious blunder on the side of every party of whom he vaunts his independence : each of those factions is a party without anation—a staff of officers without an army. So accustomed have the professional politicians of France grown to carry on their business by a kind of routine, that they manifestly believe in the possibility of going on in the same way for ever. If Louis Philippe undermined the organic vitality of French politics by universal corruption, French statesmen have degraded the in- tellect of French politics by the utmost abuse of mannerism. The formulas of party are all in all ; and each circle of statesmen has positively forgotten that to be potential every policy must have a nation in the background. French statesmanship is like the exavice of some insects, which look like the livi has withdrawn itself, leaving only the
creature when the body and decaying skin, a bloodless and bodiless simulacrum of life. There are the Monarch- ists without a realm to be monarchical, the Legitimists without a nation to be loyal, the Republicans without a republic to fill up their manifestoes ; each is a skeleton party without a people. That necessary basis of political power has been dropped by the man- nerists, and Louis Napoleon has been allowed to pick up the waif.
A nation without a party has no instrument of action; a party without a nation at its back has no substance, no moment= or stability. The plebs can do nothing against the populus, with the greater education of the latter, its skill and practice in politics. The peopleless factions have no root in the nation, and can attain no permanent possession of power. It -will remain a struggle, in which power will probably pass from one to the othe'rp on a short lease ; held by each, perhaps, so long as other parties can be out- bidden in bribes for the army. It looks as if it must remain so until some able political party or some able man restore vitality to politics and recover an influence in the nation at large. Many accidents might bring about such a result, even before it might be expected. For instance : if not retrograde or stationary, France is advancing less than other nations in material growth; her com- parative depression might invite aggression; and then vitality would be restored to an ardent and highly nationalized people by a common danger to their nationality. No disaster, almost, would be too great a price for such a restoration. Meanwhile, the state of French politics is not far different from that to which our own is sinking—a mannered art carried on by professional statesmen divorced from the people. The example ought to be useful to us.
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