The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, JULY 26, 1871.

Evening Star, Volume IX, Issue 2633, 26 July 1871, Page 2

The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, JULY 26, 1871.

Although the European news by the Mail is more cheering than re-, ceiv'ecl for the past twelve months, it is by no means clear that France is through her difficulties. We can hardly conceive a more complete political chaos than that into which the country has been plunged. _ Most cases of civil wars of which history gives account have arisen through nearly equally matched parties in States, endeavouring to establish their own theories of government under chosen and recognised leaders, or to seat a claimant on the throne. This might have been the case with France had the" malcontents in Paris had time and opportunity to organise and understandeach other. However numerous the Communists may have been, prior to the' German war they had been kept updey by force. Without arms, they were Overawed by, an overwhelming and disciplined army,, enjoying every: advantage of position; occupying the very fortifications which were constructed with a view to protecting Ppris equally against, an external and an internal enemy;' -The sudden desstruction of that army, and the investment of the city by the Germans placed arms and the fortresses unexpectedly in the Communists’ hands, and the peace concluded with the Germans afforded an opportunity such as was never before presented to them of constructing a Government which should carry out the political theories they held. That they were not prepared with a substitute for the system that was displaced, is evident by the result. A successful revolution requires not only a large force to ensure success, but wide spread sympathy with its objects. But this sympathy evidently did not exist to any extent beyond the walls of Paris, The intellect was at Versailles, and the provisional government there had the moral support of France in their contest with the Communists. That clique has been subdued at a fearful cost, and France has to mourn over the ruins of her capital. The foreign foe admired and wished to spare its palaces, its works of art, its glorious ‘ monuments of past ages. Other nations remonstrated, and pressed that it might be left uninjured, but though the civilised world trembled for the doomed City, and poured in of their abundance for its suffering people when the gates were Open, they had no such respect for themselves. The kindliness of other nations was thrown away, and their bounty has been used to,feed those who have, in the wantonness of revenge, stamped themselves as worse, than the barbarians who wasted Italy on the disruption of the Roman Empire. The Goths and Vandals were strangers to the beautiful in art, and conquerors of those whose property they pillaged and destroyed, .but the Communists had been born and nurtured amidst its influences, and had a national interest in it. We find it difficult to understand the degradation pf sentiment that has Jed these, outrages. And what is to be the result -1 The construction of the form of government seems yet to be f determined upon. Although apparently it is .intended to invite some one to be king, there are difficulties to be encountered in establishing monarchies in countries in which revolution has become chronic, that can only be met successfully by very wise and judicious measures. Not only must there be State Government but Individual selfgovernment. National order is very much the result of habit, and requires a long series of years to become a recognised creed amongst a people. The inhabitants of France have always been prone to look too much to Governments and too little to themselves for their prosperity. If we compare the British with them, the contrast is remarkable. No matter whether on diggings where Governments exert OO O # w but little influence, in towns where there is an organised system, in islands such as the Fijis, or under the immediate eye of the supreme

legislature, there is the same cheerful submission to cognition of* eachotheTVvights. There may be excitement; or, as in the United States, even civil war; but the difteiv ence settled, the army may be dispensed with. The work of reconstruction Avill be done by the people, themselves. Whether the institutions of France will be so arranged as to implant and foster this self-government, or whether the world will see another vain effort to reproduce the past, we cannot gather from the latest news. Napoleon, Louis Phillipe, Charles the Tenth, and Louis the Eighteenth, tried to restore monarchy and aristocracy, and failed. It is difficult to conceive a monarchy without an aristocracy, and still more difficult to imagine how two powers so necessary to each other can be successfully created in the present anarchical condition of Franco. We fear the political genius has not yet ' arisen in that country that can continue the discordant political parties so as to form a harmonious whole; and that internal trouble is not yet over. The party that has the support of the army must in the end succeed for a while.