AFFAIRS IN FRANCE.

Globe, Volume I, Issue 97, 22 September 1874, Page 3

AFFAIRS IN FRANCE.

[Prom a correspondent of “ The Press, Paris, July 28. Matters continue to be very unsatisfactory; they do not even go back, the better, perhaps, to advance ; the depressing provisional reigns, and has every prospect of continuing. It is nothing new to say the Assembly is powerless to constitute any form of Government, and ought to dissolve. It will likely do neither ; it will hold on. Public opinion seems to be becoming paralysed, and the successive disappointments the nation has experienced, in hoping against hope, for a termination of the uncertain, is proving a weariness of the flesh, and producing the tranquility which is associated with fatalism. The country worked itself up to believe that the Republic would be voted, but the Government stepped in at the twelfth hour, extinguished the salutary solution, while proposing nothing instead, for the personal Septennate will never be constituted by the present Chamber, and a new one would summarily reject a scheme accepting the Marshal for a Constitution, with the reversionary interest of anarchy, on his death or resignation. To adjourn the constitutional laws is not a solution, and the Marshal has made a mistake in retracting the urgency be demanded in his message for giving at once definite institutions to the country ; he has also made a lamentable blunder in refusing to lean on a compact body of Conservative Republicans only too willing to frame his office with constitutional safeguards, he has decided to ride in company with radically divided Monarchists, who have other Saints to worship, and at most can only give the Marshal the second place in their affections. The role of the Assembly may be consisidered as ended ; nearly one-half of its membexs demand the dissolution, which can be avoided for a time by the recess. Indeed for all useful purposes, the House might adjourn till the end of the Septennate. It chants a De Profundis over the Republic, while the nation holds beyond doubt to a Te Denm. In presence of official contradictions, of inconsistencies on the part of the legislators so flagrant, that it is a waste of time alluding to them ; of the maintenance of the state of siege, now four months in vigor over the half of France ; of the postponement of nearly all fundamental measures of reorganisation ; of schemes for ensuring the triumph of parties rather than of the country—confidence, ever a plant of slow growth, cannot be blamed for showing no signs of vigor, and security must be excused for remaining suspicious. The last preoccupation with employers of labor is the resumption of work ; the serious and growing deficiencies in the weekly receipts of the railway companies indicate the depressed state of commerce, and compulsory idle hands attest the decline of industry. Foreigners engaged in commercial pursuits loudly complain of the stagnation of affairs, and having made all the retrenchments possible to bear up against what they expected would be only a passing depression, several have left, and others are preparing to depart. Each Industried that so retires brings away with him to Belgium, Italy, or Germany a number of clients that France will lose for ever. Business cannot sustain a succession of political shocks ; it must have the belief as well as the assurance of definite tranquility. The misery is beyond doubt very great ; not only the journals assert it, but the sad fact can be ascertained in daily intercourse with society, in the evidence of closed shops, and next to idle shopkeepers, who courageously struggle on for a good time coming. Yet it is inconceivable in presence of these facts that Royalist deputies can shut their eyes and refuse the means of removing the oppression that weighs upon everything. Most respectable looking persons may be encountered in any street selling toys, tape, ribbons, &c,essaying this resource for gaining an honest meal, before begging or applying to the charity fund, for the French are to proud to solicitalms, butnevertoo independentto work in any way, however humble, provided it be not dishonorable. I have seen on many occasions individuals picking a crust of bread out of the gutter, cleaning it, and retiring to a remote corner to eat it. It would not be justice to draw from this gloomy picture, which is but in any case ephemeral, the conclusion that the country is slowly dying, or in decadence. The nation that has paid five milliards, which is never happier than when fully at work, which is saving, and proverbially sober, does not possess the germs of dissolution. The present crisis is what Thiers some time ago called a “ stoppage ” in the history of the nation ; and let us be fair, where is the country which, if divided by four contending parties, would be otherwise than distracted, and unable to be anything else for a time ? It is questionable if the people would be as enduring and long suffering as the French. Much of this resignation is to be attributed to the instinctive love of the masses for that wise and sagacious Republic, which would cease to’make France the appanage of one, rather than of all. Republicanism in this country is not a matter of theory or personal liking ; it is a necessity, the compromise suggested by events. Were the state of siege raised, and the press allowed to i’e-enter under the regime of common law, the further continuation of the Assembly, or its more or less lengthened adjournment, would be less painfully felt. The press could speak at its risks and perils, but it would be free to sound the alarm for the governors as well as for the governed. Under Louis Philippe a journal was fined 20,000 francs, the Second Empire never exceeded 6000 francs, and when it suppressed a newspaper, it gave three solemn warnings beforehand. By the siege law a mere stroke of the pen stops a journal The Figaro which had lately been suspended for fifteen days, estimates its loss at nearly 80,000 francs. It gave its staff twelve days’ holidays to go repose in the country, paying all salaries in advance, and supplying gratuitously the necessary railway tickets. It is strange that press punishments never produce the slightest good, and while endeavoring to ignore the influence of newspapers. Governments aim to found organs that will represent only their views. A newspaper prosecution is never considered anything else but a political persecution in France, the consequence of being disagreeable to the authorities, and which would be dispensed with were the opposition in office.

As an illustration of manners and customs, the Government has become journalist. Believing that the 260 daily and weekly periodicals published in Paris of all sizes, shapes, prices, and aims, were insufficient to instruct the population, a new print at one sous per number, has been produced. It endeavors to be as full of information as an egg is of meat, and as varied as an encycloproedia. Special classes are allowed to subscribe at reduced terms. 'The marvel is to have the advantage of being exempted from the taxes that weigh on other publications, a favoritism which will bring the little stranger forward for a public examination in the Assembly Among other attractions, the print has its romance ; no publication of the kind could exist without its serial novel, its feuilleton. It is calculated that twelve millions of individuals in France, belonging to all classes of society, read a chapter of a romance by this means per day ; or perhaps some twenty volumes per annum for a total. Now what temperament can resist this regime! And as if one story at a time was not sufficient, some journals give two. It is the part of the paper that pays best, and that must be paid for. It forms, perhaps, the principal intellectual food of the French ; now a romance is dangerous, precisely because it is a romance, and the virtuous novel is not a whit better because it creates only Don Quixotes. Also, after a romantic man, there is nothing more deplorable than a romantic nation; and the novel which seeks the reader in France is so cheap in form, that it is seductive. It is in addition an important means of propagandism, and the Second Empire never neglected its agency to keep alive the Napoleonic legend, indeed a member of the Corps Legislatif defended the trash on the grounds that the feuilleton created a taste for reading, and was the product of intelligence. Strange way to encourage a taste for good works by the perusal of bad ones. Much yet remains to be done for the scattered dead who fell in the late battles around Paris. The little hillocks that mark the last bivouac of a brave are gradually disappearing; the crosses in wood have fallen down* and the weather has obliterated the epitaph; crowns have faded, or have been blown away. Nowhere is this more perceptible than in the neighborhood of Buzeuval, where the last fight and the 44 torrential sortie” occurred. Friends could do much in this locality to rescue 44 beds of glory” from ruin. Among the debris of a chateau in the vicinity there are several graves covered with rank weeds, and at the end of a trench containing many bodies there is placed as a headstone, a stone with a plate displaying in gilt letters the word 44 Providence”—which is the name of an insurance company, and that had formed part of the castle destroyed. The French pride themselves on their worship of their dead, but in the point in question a. visit to Gravelotte or Worth would show that the German has the advantage. The great heat having departed, or temporarily retired, Parisians are returning to less Hottentot modes of life. There being less employment, there are more people to be met with, and the process of buying and selling goes on, but with important reductions. If one can earn sufficient to make the two ends meet, thousands feel contented. The fashionable world seems particularly attracted to Paris this year ; the rule appears to be a few weeks at the sea side or at a Spa, and then back to the capital. Is the discovery being made that our dead is our liveliest season? The Spaniards continue to flock to the city, a refuge truly for them ; to judge by appearances it is the upper teu only that have crossed the Pyrenees; they have the air neither to be sad nor gay, and indulge but little in conversation among themselves when in public. Perhaps the dons are aware that however welcome may be the Senoras, their place is not to admire the civil war which is tearing their beautiful country to pieces, from a chair in the Champs Blyshes.