Untitled

Patea Mail, Volume IV, Issue 401, 19 February 1879, Page 2

Marshal McMahon has resigned! Well, better late titan never. Men cannot say now that he has not done one wise thing, which they piobably would have said had ho held office till the end of his seven years term. As the second President of the third Republic, bis name will probably last as lung as that of any other man whose talents were not brilliant, whose abilities were not solid, who was neither a great warrior, nor a great ruler. How is it that in that country, where every soldier carries a marshal’s baton in his knapsack, and may live to bear it more openly, in the land where no talent is hidden, the commonplace Marshal has contrived to sit on the top of the wheel so long? He was the guarantee of stability to the French people, who weie weary of perpetual transition from chaos to confusion, and from confusion back to chaos. He had accepted the Republic for better for worse, till death did them part; and the army, with whom his influence was supposed to be great, would certainly say “ amen” to his choice. Ministries might rise or fall, Chambers might come and go, plots might bo laid and batched, bntthe Marshal would cling to his seat like Patience to her monument, and to the Constitution as to his seat. So hoped the French people. So did tho Marshal promise. Alas! be said “I go,” and went not. He hated the Republic which the people loved. Ho drove from office the Republican Ministry that possessed .the confidence of the nation. He put in their places a cabal, representing an undoubted minority. He drew the teeth of the exasperated legislature,- by terminating its existence. He countenanced wholesale bribery, the persecution of Republican officials,, and the intimidation of political opponents. These things have gradually worn the Marshal’s popularity down- to the vanishing point. Distrusted by the people, and at variance with the great majority, of the legislature, he remembered the glorious example of Sedan and took a quarrel with his Ministers as a pretext for surrendering. M. Grevy is the new President' of France. His election seems to guarantee the stability of the Republic, . which Ida predecessor only regarded as a stepping stone to the restoration of the Empire. Francois Paul Jules Grevy, who is a lawyer by profession, was born in 1813. He took part in the Revolution of July, 183G, was returned to the Constituent Assembly in 1818, where he opposed the Government cd’ bonis Napoleon. When Ihc latter seized the

Dictatorship, /M- Grcvy held alool irom politics,’ lu 1571, ha became {’resident of the National-Assembly, in which otlice he displayed great tael and moderation. He resigned in 187;). He declares that France made one mistake,, in m»t founding a Constitutional .\!nn irehy. when she possessed the elements of one, and that Her second md greatest mistake would he, to attempt to found one, now that all those elements are dost roved.