The French Government is, we fear, committing a blunder about
an allowance to the Empress Eugenie. It wishes to make one, partly to conciliate the Bonapartiste, and partly out of the loftier feeling that those who have reigned in France should never be dismissed to the poverty which makes a people seem ungrateful and a dismissed leader a martyr. Instead of saying this, however, and appealing to the sentiment of the nation through the Empress's letter from Egypt, by which she pre- vented a coup (taut, and her absolute refusal to reign at the price of a cession • of Alsace, they are going to carry out some blundering bargain about museums, furni- ture, and the like, which will be infallibly met by the argu- ment that if the things are worth their price, it is better to sell them in England, and if they are not, the bargain only deceives the public. The French would find it good policy to give re- tiring pensions to dismissed heads of the State, for nothing makes men hold on like deep pecuniary fear. If Louis Napoleon had had £20,000 a year and Arenemberg, would he have mounted the Throne of France?
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