AFFAIRS IN FRANCE.

Globe, Volume I, Issue 3, 3 June 1874, Page 3

AFFAIRS IN FRANCE.

(FROM A CORRESPONDENT.) Paris, April 7. The Legitimists are more Royalist than the King. They are in the humor for cutting their way to the throne ; they have burned their vessels, and seem bent on self destruction. What does Henri Y. think of his fanatical followers, if he be in a calm retreat, as in any other country but this the leaders of the forlorn hope of his Majesty would certainly.be handed over to a lunacy commission ? This lamentable crusade by the Jacobins of Monarchy, has created net alarm but irritation, If there be one matter clear in the tangled web of French politics, it is, that the Comte de Chambord's day is over, and that that of his heir “expectant,” the Comte de Paris, is enrolled among the improbabilities. The future of this country is becoming painfully uncertain, and all the result of want of distinct speech and consistent conduct on the part of the majority in the Assembly, which employs empirical remedies, that hardly conceal the disease, still less suppress it, and at best, but calm the pain for a passing moment. Refusing to organise the Republic, incapable to restore a King, the majority voted the only modus vivendi possible—the prorogation of MacMahon’s powers, but designedly hesitated to organise them, to regulate above all, the succession to the office in case of vacancy ; hence the cause of the present trouble. The coalition was only powerful to overthrow Thiers ; and this ingratitude towards that patriot and statesman, is now being followed by its natural Nemesis. To organise the Septenaate becomes then not alone a matter of necessity, but of national safety ; the door will be thus legally closed against the three rival saviours of France, and the wishes of the countiy carried out for a Constitutional Septennate, which is only a disfiguration of the term Republic. Besides, when the necessary laws are voted for the transmission of power to a new Assembly, the longlooked for dissolution of the present Chamber must come off as a matter of course. Among the present die-hard deputies there will be much weeping and gnashing of teeth, for the place which knows them shall know them no more. Before the conciliatory and Conservative Republic that will be founded, independent of extreme parties, Monarchists may be gratified with the luxury of dying game. The Bonapartists keep moving, stage fashion ; the same rank and file after making their bow, troop behind the scenes to come to the front again. Distinguished men rally to the Republic, like Thiers, Remusat, Perier, Bay, &c., but none to Imperialism. Since three years an idea has taken possession of the people, that of the principle of power being its property ; and the more they reflect on the accumulated deceptions of the various systems of monarchies they have tried, the more they familiarise themselves to the idea of being their own master. They decide themselves to be king, and resolve to have henceforth only servants. There are recalcitrants who are rebel towards the law which ordains that society tends to pass from the aristocratic to the democratic state ; the evolution may be slow or rapid, but it is certain, and never occurs a second time in the same social existence. Once crossed, there is no return. France has passed through this evolution, and at the present there is no aristocratic institution in the land, which accounts for the precariousncss of monarchy. The latter having no roots withers away. This condition of things on the other hand, menaces with danger and nullity all plans tending to stifle the representation of public opinion, either by mutilating universal sufferage, or overriding it by a packed Senate. The people do not view their electoral system as perfect, still less are they opposed to its improvement. They object however, to royalists improving away their republic, and insist on showing, that one is never better served than when served by himself. It is in China only that a house is burned down to roast a pig, a circumstance French legislation forgets. Twenty millions of francs, in new taxes, have yet to be obtained, before the budget can be squared. They will be found of course because they must. We are becoming as accustomed to grinding taxes, as to- the state of siege, and the war which is waged against the disagreeable journals. Look at the power of the press for example ; an organ in Alger attacked the colonial municipality, and the Governor. General Chanzy, put the chief town of Algiers at once under martral law 1 The French, however, have never been happy in their plans for making colonists great, glorious and free. Perhaps as a means for consoling us, by the presentation of a. spectacle that we might be worse, M. Boislisle has produced another of his volumes on the national finances during the reign of the Grand Monarch, and of the Grand Misery, for extremes meet. From 10 S 3 to 161*9 the cnly

"defence against the tax collector, was to enter into holy orders or secure a patent of nobility. The more Louis XIV, waxed in pride, the more the country groaned under suffering. No sooner had his majesty made peace at one side, than ho undertook war at another. Fighting was as important to his rank, as building palaces and taking mistresses, of which all had this in common, to be very costly. Colbert and Vauban having remonstrated with the King on his dreadful expenditure, incurred his displeasure, and died of broken hearts. Every person then as now, disliked paying taxes, and sought all means to avoid doing so; at last between privileged and purchased exemptions, the burdens fell altogether on the very poor, who, if in arrear, were huddled together, men, women, and children, in a black hole of Calcutta prison, till they raised the wind, for there was the devil to pay. Another plan was to confine defaulters in dry wells, believing, as the authorities did, that on arriving at the bottom, truth would be discovered. The revocation of the edict of Nantes forced half a million of the richest and most industrious of the population to seek refuge from the dragoons, whose duty was to sabre the Huguenots into going to mass. In flying, the Protestants brought their wealth with them, and thus impoverished the mother-country. The Jews were next attended to, but the diggings did not turnout successful in this quarter. Towns were permitted to postpone paying their ordinary liabilities, so as to raise loans for the royal exchequer ; public offices were auctioned to the highest bidder, and the same appointment was held by several individuals, who discharged its duties in turn, for the appointment secured exemption from paying taxes, The civil service thus represented a swarm of locusts, who purchased the right to devour the financial life of the nation. The King indulged in his whims all the same. He expended nine million pounds to bring the waters of the Eure to Versailles, and though the works were abandoned, upwards of ten thousand men perished in cutting the channel through a series of dismal swamps. After investing in a competitive ' purchase” for the civil service, the buyer could, by pickings and stealings, more than recoup himself the outlay. Another scourge was the billeting of the soldiers on the inhabitants of a town. Householders could purchase exemption, so that in Metz, in 1695, the exemptions were so numerous that there was no lodgment to be had for the troops ; the very poor had quitted the town. When people could not pay their taxes, dragoons were billeted upon them, just as they were on Protestant families who declined to be converted. When all was carried off to acquit the taxes, there yet remained to sell the doors and windows of the houses ; the wood made fuel, and the ironwork was valuable. Behind these was the menace of the prison, the hulks, and the gibbet. In 1686 the King sent his plate to be coined, and some of the nobility and convents did the same. Sorcerers appeared with “divining rods” to indicate hidden treasures ; yet the famine continued to be sore in the land; the populations adopted begging as a profession ; they fed on wild herbs and rotten chestnuts; these exhausted, they died off, after living like beasts of prey in the woods, as the towns drove them outside the walls. At Pan an attempt was made to “ magazine” the beggars, who died like emmets. While many fed on ground hazel nut shells, the grain was carried off to feed the soldiers. The wheat crops were cut before being fully ripe ; houses were forced open in the name of the law to search for concealed flour. Some dioceses lost by famine 60,000 persons in a year; in others, the deaths were 400 a day. France was a grand hospital, desolate, and without provisions. The To D(ium was everywhere chanted ; it was heard, for as Voltaire observed, the people died of misery to its sound. Finally, death having done its work, the survivors had at last sufficiency of food. No one is sorry that Lent is over. We feel ashamed at the manner it was observed this ygar ; more gaiety than asceticism. Hearts remained studiously light in order to aid the city trade, and it was hoped the end would sanctify the means. Nothing was left undone in the matter of concerts of sacred music, unless to surpass them by profane symphonies. If ladies patronised balls, they never failed to subscribe for cnairs in the churches to hear jthe canons bombard the pomps and vanities of the world. The theatres closed on Good Friday, like the butchers and poulterers, as a matter of course, the indefatigable Halevy bringing out the previous day a Vaudeville called “ Homard,” quite in keeping with fasting times, for the church has never prohibited the banns between lobsters and the stomach. The pious journals, while giving full particulars of the play, denounced the impiety of the author. Would they wish him to resemble Racine, who, when dying, regretted all the immortal works that he had written 1 Owing to the adoption of the Roman ritual, the chapels representing the Passion were this year draped in white, and looked very effective, suggesting hopeand courage around His tomb. The sacred relics at Noire Dame were objects of veneration as usual; like other cathedrals, that of Paris possesses the “ true crown of thorns,” portions of the cross, some of its nails, See., and faith saves. The church bells according to custom remained silent from Thursday—travelled to Rome as the legend avows—till Easter Sunday, when they rang in the happy morn. The Free-thinkers, it, is said, abstained from Lucullian banquets on Good Friday, for it is popularly believed the consumption of beefsteaks and sausages on that day vexes the church, while fortifying •.their credo. Easter Sunday was wet, and the churches and cabs were filled with people, for the musical high masses are ever attractive. Formerly France observed 44 holidays, exclusive of Sundays, so that La Fontaine com plained the people were ruined by an excess of fetes, Colbert struck out 14 without ever consulting the church, and the archbishops nearly suppressed the remainder. Easter Sunday is generally a family day in Paris, . where the old and young folks are occupied opening eggs, fabricated in all colors, materials, and sizes, and filled with toys, sugarplums, smoking apparatus, See. The gingerbread fair is very poor this year; political characters have been excluded, thanks to the vigilance of the census ; Don Carlos is perhaps the only notoriety honored in brown pastry. A dealer in sausages attracted notice from his signboard, wherein it was assorted that while the most beautiful works of art crumble to dust in time, sausages become only the harder, the better to immortalize pork. The project of holding a competitive exhibition of all the tumblers, jugglers, tight-rope dancers, and natural history phenomena has failed,