THE ATTITUDE OF FRANCE.

Grey River Argus, Volume X, Issue 777, 10 January 1871, Page 4

THE ATTITUDE OF FRANCE.

[SCOTSMAN.] To fall with dignity seems to be a great difficulty both with men and nations. The Roman Csesar is historically held to have succeeded ; the French Caesar has not, though he says, and perhaps truly, that he tried it. But it was not he alone that fell ; in that great, fall he dragged down a great and haughty nation — then he, and they, and all of them fell down. And one of the most sorrowful spectacles of the many sad and painful sights at present to be seen, is the want of dignity with which proud Fn.noe is meeting her fate. Instead of folding her robes about her, and, as to her supremacy in glory and power, dying decently, she his been screaming, alternately in rage and grief, with tears and with threats, and is reduced even todenyinyher own identity. It is long since the world has seen a more important as well as dramatic confrtbu'ion to history than M. Jules Favre's report of his interview with Count Bismarck (the text of which we, alone of all the journals in the Three Kinudr.ms, were enabled to procure for yesterday's paper, and which we hope our readers did not fail to mark and digest) ; but that document, though deeply pathetic, is wanting in that great fortitude of spirit whioh is required to acknowledge, and that true dignity which is shown in submitting to, the inexorable calamity. It is impossible to read unmoved snch confessions as these — " I turned my back to hide the tears which were choking me," or, "I leave you, miserable" — proceeding from the representative of a great naiion, and himself, at least according to all outward semblance, an honest man and an earnest patriot. But when attention is turned to the statements and appeals by which the representative of France sought to obtain from her enemy more merciful terms than the enemy was willing to grant and able to refuse, sympathy, though not repelled, is greatly discouraged, and there arises an inclination to cendemn the equivocations with which the French pleas were urged almost as much as the insolence, at leastjof manner, with which they were rejected. "Up to the Jast moment, we were opposed to the war, which the Imperial Government entered upon with a purely dynastic interest." It was the Emperor aione that made the war — it is " we" that are seeking to make peace — that is the chief ground on which France, since the catastrophe at Sedan, has been seeking to obtain terma. In looking how that matter stands, there is a great difficulty in understanding who or what is meant by the frequently recurring " we" in the French official documents; but in whatever sense it is taken, the statements to which it is appended cannot be accepted as true, If by " we" is meant the nation, it is not true that the nation and the Emperor were antagonistic, or are now separable ; if by " we" is meant even no more than the individual members of the existing Government, then it is not true that "we were opposed to the war," and it would matter little or nothing though it were true. The Empire, especially with the institutions which it was surrounded when this war entered on, was, if not the direct product, at least the often accepted and ratified result of universal suffrage. Universal suffrage may be a very cad thing. But it is not for the men now constituting the Government of France so to say. It is their system — their principle is, that no political institutions are

valid without it, nor invalid with it. Th« Empire, therefore, was valid according to Repiibboin and Dsmocratic principles, for it had the sanction of universal suffrage h;ilf-;i-dozen times repeated. On those principles, or indeed on any other, it was much more valid than is the present Government, which is the momentary product of a Parisian riot. There is, therefore, incomparably less reason in the present Government saying that the late Government hud not nation il authorisation, than there is in Cumt Bismarck standing upon the same assertion as -to fie present Government. Even suppose the present Government were to maintain that by virtnr.* of some "conjuration and some mighty magic," the exEmperor ruled France in spite of, t'muirh still by or through, universal suffrage, they woull be making confession that f>>r twenty years that turbulent nation had been the helpless thrall of one man, and that man one whom they in the same breath condemn as contemptible. If such a statement c>>uld be believed, it would not the less but all the more be held as an utter condemnation both of the nation and of the political system of those who put it furth. Besides, they steadily forget that they are repudiating the acts not only of the Emperor but of the Parliament of which they themselves were members. The Legislative Body, existing before and at the commencement of the war, was a body elected by universal suffrage, and whose truly representative character was testified by its -comprising men of the most various and extreme opinions, including almost all the men forming' the present Government. Now, from the first until the last, even to Sedan, the Ministry of the Emperor acted in accord with the popular branch of the Legislature. On the 6th July, when the controversy about the Spanish throne began to look black, the French Premier, Ollivier, said to the Legislative Body. "There is no question here of a hidden object, and if war be necessary, the Government will not enter upon it without tho assent of the Legislative Body, for we live under a Parliamentary regime." That was trua, and the promise made was kept. At every step the Chamber was informed, at least as frankly as any Brithh or any other Parliament ever was informed, of what was going on in diplomacy ; and at no step did the Legislative Body offer any dissuasions, but always incentives, to the policy which was obvioiisly leading on to war. On the 15th July the intention of the Government was announced simultaneously in both Chambers, and in both was received with enthusiastic and virtually unanimous approval. In the Legislative Body, the demand of 50,000,000 francs additional for the army was at once acceded to by 246 votes to 10. Sixteen millions for the navy were voted by 248 to ] ; and the immediate calling out of the Garde Mobile for active service by 243 to 1. In the Senate there was not even one dissenting voice. It is questionable if, in the whole history of representative instititutions, any nation ever went to war with so large an approval of the representative body. Then all outward symptoms went to show that what was d->ne indoors was ratified out of doors. The announcement of the declaration of war was received by parading mobs in Paris with cries of " Vive la guerre /" and "a Berlin!" When the Chamber had sanctioned war and voted the money, the cry of "Vive VEmpereur !" which had long before beome rare and feeb'e in Paris, hroke out with vigour. If the men of the present Government choose to d'mv the authority of the late Legislative Body, they cannot deny also the authority of the mobs of the Boulevards ; for it was those mobs and nothing else that overthrew the Legislative Body, and raised this Government. It is a fact, not to be honestly denied, and therefore to be frankly confessed, that, public opinion in France, whether manifested in constitutional forms, or those irregular forms which in th^t country seem often accepted as of snperior authority, was ea^er for entrance upon this war. More, thut opinioa did not materially change until the cipitolaUon at Sedan and the capture of the Emperor. A f id then all at once bpgan to be declared, in name of the French people, that they had never had anything to do with either the Empire or the Parliament, and persons calling themselves the French people broke out into safe and childish fury against everything bearing the letter "N." It is painful to see even M. Jules Favre exhibiting so much of the same j spirit as to state, as one of his pleas for forbearance, "at this moment we have just accomplished a fact so considerable as that of the overthrow of the promoters of the war." It is easy to imagine the humor in which these words would be heard by Count Bismarck, who knows so well that it was by Prussia, not by France, at Sedan, not at Paris, that the Emperor was overthrown. It is carrying supposition a great way to suppose that the men of the present Government would succeed in getting it believed that neither the Legislative Body nor the Parisian population were repre-

sentative of French public opinion ; but, even .then, tney would not be left the miserable subterfuge that they and they . alone represented that opinion. Fur they, too— with, we think, not more than two exceptions, one of whom, however, was M. Jules Favre himself— voted 1 in favor of the war. They were almost ail members of the Legislative Body when only one member of that Body voted against war. Even Gambetta, the present Minister of the Interior, an extreme democrat, and possessed with a rabid hatred of the Empire pnd the Emperor, gave his voice tor war, as did, so far as can be made nut, seven out of his nine colleagues. Karl Blind, the German democratic leader, referring to his brother democrat Victor Hugo's appeal t.> the German nation, refers to some of these facts, and adds that Victor Hugo himself "had by his writings instigited France to seize the Rhenish frontier, and that M. Jule3 Favre, though he gave a faint opposition to the war last" July, did so inconsistently with his former speeches and policy. And yet Jules Favre is idmost the only man of the least note in France who can with ] any degree of truth say that he opposed the war. And " we" is rather too large a word for one man in a nation of forty millions. The war was the will of the natioii — the nation, alas, must suffer— and will only suffer the more from attempting to repudiate its former self.