English Pharisees and French Crocodiles Part 18

What! can it be that this, the most sensible nation of the world, who has withdrawn all the privileges of its monarchs, who has imposed restrictions upon them, and will not even allow them to make the slightest political allusion in public, can it be this nation that has given itself so many masters at once? If the English do not allow their kings unlimited power, it is because, in their wisdom, they fear that those kings may be born fools, or grow into despots; but out of five hundred lords, three or four hundred may be born fools; where then is the gain? Better be governed by one fool than by three or four hundred.

Among a free people, intellect alone ought to be admitted into the councils of the nation.

No one could have a word to say against such men as the Duke of Argyll and the Marquis of Salisbury having a vote to cast into the scales of England's destinies; but would not these able members of the aristocracy of birth gain in influence and prestige, if they sat in an elected house, side by side with the aristocracy of talent?

Perhaps they may think so themselves.

The House of Lords owes its existence to the English taste for antiquities or curiosities; this people, to its honor be it said, only slowly rids itself of its trammels.

It may safely be predicted that the first great political gust of wind will blow away to pieces this sort of hydropathic establishment.

CHAPTER XXV.

WHAT FRANCE HAS DONE TO MERIT THE RESPECT OF THE WORLD.

France, ruined by the wars and extravagances of Louis XIV., exasperated by the turpitudes of Louis XV., encouraged by the weakness of Louis XVI., revolts. Thrones tremble, and the whole world is awe-struck at the terrible Revolution. Kings league themselves together against her; but such is her might that, with soldiers half armed, half clothed, half fed, she puts to flight the allied armies of the enemies, who had sworn to crush her.

Up rises a man and wrests from her all the liberty she had just bought at the price of so much bloodshed. To steady himself upon an unsteady throne, Napoleon engages in dynastic wars for ten years, marching his victorious army from capital to capital, while Europe wonders and trembles. At length the eagle falls, and France, sick of military glory, beaten, but not humiliated, takes breath and submits to the Restoration imposed upon her by the allied invaders. To console herself for the loss of the Republic, a form of government least calculated to foster literature and the fine arts, she profits by the return of monarchical rule to inaugurate the Golden Age of 1830. I say _the Age of 1830_, for such is the name this epoch, one of the most glorious in the history of France, will be known by in the next century. Now appear, in poetry, Victor Hugo, Lamartine, Alfred de Musset, Beranger; in fiction, Balzac, Chateaubriand, Alexandre Dumas, George Sand; in history, Thiers, Guizot; in political oratory, Manuel, Foy, Berryer; in criticism, Sainte-Beuve, Jules Janin; in painting, Horace Vernet, Ingres, Delacroix, Gudin; in music, Boieldieu, Herold, Halevy, Auber; in tragedy, Talma, Rachel; in comedy, Mars, Duvernoy; in opera, Nourrit, Duprez, Lablache, Baroilhet, Malibran.

I have mentioned but a few of the princes of talent.

To keep her hand in practice, she makes the conquest of Algeria, and, later on, having nothing else particular in hand, she takes it into her head to make the Suez Ca.n.a.l, a gigantic undertaking, which of itself would be enough to save the nineteenth century from oblivion. Ever enamored of great names, she re-establishes the Empire, because there is a man in the world who bears the name of the victor of Austerlitz.

Smitten once more with that strange malady, the love of glory, she fights Russia in 1855 to prevent her from going to Constantinople, and Austria in 1859 to create Italian unity. Then comes that terrible year, the year 1870. With an army of 350,000 men, she sanctions a war, like the child that she is, with a nation, which for sixteen years had been silently preparing to avenge her defeat at Jena, and which had 1,200,0000 men ready to take the field. She is conquered, and, alas!

humiliated. She pays her conquerors $1,000,000,000, but this she has almost forgotten, and sees wrenched from her two provinces that she loved and was beloved by; this she will never forget. The following year, she holds up her head, the richest and most esteemed of European nations. To-day, if she only had a leader, republican or monarch, she would be the strongest.

Ah, dear Foreigners all over the world, respect her, that beautiful France! I have often heard the sincerest and most intelligent of you say that no country in the world would probably have been able to do as much.

THE END.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] If my memory serves me, it was one of our wittiest vaudevillists who once laid a wager that he would get an encore, at one of our popular theaters on the Boulevard, for the following patriotic quatrain:

"La lachete ne vaut pas la vaillance, Mille revers ne font pas un succes; La France, amis, sera toujours la France, Les Francais seront toujours les Francais."

He won the bet.

The London _badauds_ are at present nightly applauding, at the Empire Theater, a patriotic song which begins by the following words:

"What though the powers the world doth hold Were all against us met, We have the might they felt of old, And England's England yet."

Is it not strange that music-hall jingoism and _chauvinisme_ should not only be expressed in the same manner, but by the very same words?

[2] I take the word "admiration" in the Latin sense of "wonder."

[3] The Germanic hordes, which overran Gaul in the fifth century, did not succeed in changing our language or character. On the contrary, the barbarians were civilized by contact with us, and adopted our language, instead of imposing theirs upon us. In Great Britain, the case was different: the absorption was complete: from the fifth to the ninth century, the island was perfectly Germanic.

[4] In our National Schools (_ecoles Communales_), the prizes often take the form of sums of money, which are deposited in the Savings Bank in the child's name.

[5] England makes colonies for the exportation of her goods and for her surplus population; France makes colonies for the wholesale exportation of her officials. In Annam, there are 1000 French Colonists, 4500 French soldiers, and 2000 French officials.

[6] "La Reforme Intellectuelle et Morale."

[7] Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

[8] Everybody knows that, at Guernsey, Victor Hugo had an Irish Catholic cook, and that the ill.u.s.trious poet abstained from meat on Fridays, not to offend his faithful servant.

[9] Some two hundred years ago, a king was taken to Whitehall to be beheaded for wis.h.i.+ng to govern without his people; but here was a future king who had come there to see the people try to overthrow the House of Lords.--_Tempora mutantur._

[10] The society in question is described in the English newspapers of the 19th of December, 1884.

[11] A member of Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet said to me one day that, in England, a statesman of M. Ollivier's ability would be sure to return to power.