Je tennine sur cette pensée consolante, et je vous prie de me croire.
Votre bien affectionné,
PHILIPPE COMTE DE PARIS.
It is interesting to compare with this another view of the French elections and of the probable course of events, taken from a very different standpoint.
From the Due de Broglie
8 novembre.—Vous avez vu le rèsultat de nos élections, qui ont été plus heureuses pour la cause générale du parti conservateur que pour ce qui me regarde particulièrement. Si nous ne vivions pas dans un temps oú toutes les prévisions sont trompées par une certaine inertie générale qui amortit toutes les passions et ralentit le cours naturel des événements, je croirais qu'une crise violente est assez prochaine, les éléments extrêmes se trouvant réums et rapprochés dans l'Assemblée nouvelle, de manière à former un mélange explosible comme la chimie redoute d'en amener. De part ni d'autre, d'ailleurs, il n'y a d'homme en état de diriger les événements; ils iront done probablement tout seuls, commes des chevaux qui n'ont pas de cocher, ce qui est le moyen à peu près sûr d'aller dans le fossé.
CHAPTER XXII
RETIREMENT
Christmas and the early days of the New Year were passed at Foxholes. On January 15th the Reeves returned to Rutland Gate. Parliament met on the 21st, and, as had been foreseen, the Government was defeated on an amendment to the Address. Lord Salisbury's resignation was announced on February 1st, and, on the 3rd, Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet was formed, Sir William Harcourt being Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Rosebery Foreign Secretary, and Mr. John Morley Secretary for Ireland. Sir Henry James, now Lord James of Hereford, declined the office of Lord Chancellor; Lord Hartington, the present Duke of Devonshire, declined office of any sort in a Ministry whose policy, as yet but dimly shown, was generally understood to be on the lines of advanced Radicalism. For his part, Reeve abhorred Radicalism. He had never approved of Gladstone as a politician, and now less than ever. He looked on him as a danger to the Empire, to be fought against, to be resisted, to be crushed. Nor was he singular in this. It is customary to speak of the extraordinary influence which Gladstone exercised. It was this influence, directed by sentiment or by vanity, which constituted the danger. There were many who believed the country to be on the eve of a violent, perhaps a sanguinary, revolution, fomented and abetted by Mr. Gladstone; and this belief was strengthened when, on February 8th, an East-end mob, meeting in Trafalgar Square, was allowed, without opposition, to march by Pall Mall, St. James' Street and Piccadilly, to Hyde Park, breaking the windows and plundering the shops on the way. When to this supposed revolutionary tendency of the new Ministry was added their avowed intention to bring in a measure for the pacification of Ireland, which—in the absence of details—was believed to mean the disintegration of the kingdom, the feeling of alarm, which must be very well remembered by many who read these pages, can be easily understood.
From Lord Ebury [Footnote: Lord Ebury died at the age of 92, in 1893.]