Editor's Easy Chair.
Even yet the talk of Louis Napoleon, and of that audacious action which in a day transmuted our thriving sister republic, with her regularly-elected President, and her regularly-made—though somewhat tattered—Constitution, into a kind of anomalous empire, with only an army, and a Bonaparte to hold it together—is loud, in every corner of the country. It has seemed not a little strange, that the man, at whom, three years ago, every one thought it worth his while to fling a sneer, should have gathered into his hands, with such deft management, the reins of power, and absolutely out-manœuvred the bustling little Thiers, and the bold-acting Cavaignac.
Old travelers are recalling their recollection of the spruce looking gentleman, in white kids, and with unexceptionable beaver, who used to saunter with one or two mustached companions along Pall-Mall; and who, some three months after, in even more recherche costume, used to take his morning drive, with four-in-hand, upon the asphalte surface of the Paris avenues. There seemed really nothing under cover of his finesse in air and garb which could work out such long-reaching strategy as he has just now shown us.
Belabor him as we will, with our honest republican anathemas, there must yet have been no small degree of long-sightedness belonging to the man who could transform a government in a day; and who could have laid such finger to the pulse of a whole army of Frenchmen, as to know their heart-bound to a very fraction.
The truth is, the French, with the impulse of a quick-blooded race, admire audacity of any sort; and what will call a shout, will, in nine cases out of ten, call a welcome. It is not a little hard for a plain, matter-of-fact American to conceive of the readiness with which the French army, and all the myrmidons of that glowing republican power, shift their allegiance—as obedient as an opera chorus to the wink of the maestro.
We can ourselves recall the memory of a time when that Changarnier, who is now a lion in fetters, held such rule over Paris military and Paris constabulary, that a toss of his thumb would send half the representatives to prison; and now, there is not so much as a regiment who would venture a wail for his losses. This offers sad comment on the “thinking capacity” of bayonets!
What shall we suppose of these hundred thousand scene-shifters in the red pantaloons? Are they worked upon merely by the Napoleonic champagne to a change of views; or are they tired of a sham Republic, and willing to take instead a sham Empire; or have they grown political economists, with new appreciation of government stability, and a long-sighted eagerness to secure tranquillity? Or, is not the humbler truth too patent, that their opinions herd together by a kind of brute sympathy, and are acted upon by splendor—whether of crime or of munificence; and, moreover, is it not too clear that those five hundred thousand men who prop the new dynasty with bayonets, are without any sort of what we call moral education, and rush to every issue like herds of wild bison—guided solely by instinct?
And would not a little of that sort of education which sets up school-houses, and spreads newspapers, and books, and Harper's Magazines like dew over the length and the breadth of our land, do more toward the healing of that sick French nation, than the prettiest device of Constitution, or the hugest five-sous bath-house? Ah, well-a-day, we shall have little hope for la belle France, until her army shows intelligence, and her statesmen honesty.
We can hardly give this current topic the go-by, without bringing to our reader's eye a happy summing up of suppositions in the columns of Punch, and if our listener will only read Congressional for Parliamentary, and the Bentons and the Casses for the Grahames and the Gladstones, he may form a very accurate idea of a Napoleon-Mr.-Fillmore.
Suppose the head of the Executive, or the Minister for the time being, were to take it into his head one morning to abolish the Houses of Parliament.—Suppose some of the members elected by large constituencies were to think it a duty to go and take their seats, and were to be met at the doors by swords and bayonets, and were to be wounded and taken off to prison for the attempt.—Suppose the Minister, having been harassed by a few Parliamentary debates and discussions, were to send off to Newgate or the House of Correction a few of the most eminent members of the Opposition, such as the Disraelis, the Grahames, the Gladstones, the Barings, and a sprinkling of the Humes, the Wakleys, the Walmsleys, the Cobdens, and the Brights.—Suppose the press having been found not to agree with the policy of the Minister, he were to peremptorily stop the publication of the Times, Herald, Chronicle, Post, Advertiser, Daily News, Globe, &c., &c., and limit the organs of intelligence to the Government Gazette, or one or two other prints that would write or omit just what he, the Minister, might please.—Suppose, when it occurred to the public that these measures were not exactly in conformity with the law, the Minister were to go or send some soldiers down to Westminster Hall, shut up the Courts, send the Lord Chancellor about his business, and tell Lords Campbell, Cranworth, and all the rest of the high judicial authorities, to make the best of their way home.—Suppose a few Members of Parliament were to sign a protest against these proceedings; and suppose the documents were to be torn down by soldiers, and the persons signing them packed off to Coldbath Fields or Pentonville.—Suppose all these things were to happen with a Parliament elected by Universal Suffrage, and under a Republican form of Government[.]—And lastly—Suppose we were to be told that this sort of thing is liberty, and what we ought to endeavor to get for our own country;—Should we look upon the person telling us so, as a madman, or a knave, or both? and should we not be justified in putting him as speedily, and as unceremoniously as possible—outside our doors?