M. Gambetta's speech at Grenoble last week has been the
subject of very vivid excitement in France during the present week, and has elicited comments at least as warlike and dangerous as anything of M. Gambetta's. But the speech was certainly injudicious, to say the least, though a good deal of the mischievous significance attributed to it is matter of interpretation, and Very likely not intended by the orator. Thus the remark that a new social stratum, 4‘ couche soeiale," was wanted at the top has been generally regarded as a cry for such an upturning of society as marked the great year 1792,—a cry of all others the most likely to be alarming to the quiet and conservative peasantry of the Departments. It is not easy, however, in reading the speech, to put upon this sentence so dangerous a meaning. M. sGambetta appears to be referring to the rise of a new class of working politicians since the fall of the Empire, and to be pointing out the necessity of making the change thus begun complete. The clear meaning of the speech is, no doubt, scornful in the highest degree to the National Assembly, and its main drift is an urgent demand for new elections ;—we do not believe it means or meant more. Still at best it was an imprudent and unstatesman- like speech, awakening that " fear " by which M. Grambetta too truly said that political France is apt to be governed, and arraying it on the aide of the Conservatives and against the Radicals, on whose behalf he was yet making his appeal.
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