But in this serene sky there is one dark cloud, and we may well suppose that this cloud has disturbed the optimism of the diplomats assembled at Berlin. This cloud is that dreaded unknown future when France will be no longer governed by M. Thiers.
Salvation is not to come to France from the republic; in France there is neither a republic nor a monarchy; the forces which tend to a monarchy are disunited, and consequently powerless, and those which tend to a republic are still more divided; the nation is living under an administration ad interim; there is an absence of settled government and settled institutions, and an impossibility of establishing either, because of the wide divisions of irreconcilable parties, of anarchy in principles and ideas. The salvation of France for the time being is one man, a leader whose hand is pliable, firm, and commanding enough to hold political parties in submission and keep down the rivalries which would give France over to another civil war. M. Thiers believes that any present attempt to set up a monarchy would light up a civil war; while the conviction of the majority of the Assembly at Versailles is just as strong that, if the republic lasts, this civil war will break out on the morrow of the day when France will have lost M. Thiers. Probably both are right; it is rather to the condition itself of France than to the men that lead her that this lamentable state of affairs is to be attributed which finds its expression in the government of a provisional republic having nothing to look forward to in the future but unfathomable darkness and mystery.
M. Thiers is the embodiment of the conservative republic, which will last just so long as he lives, and I desire that his needed dictatorship be prolonged for a long while yet; but can we reasonably entertain such a hope? He has undertaken the admirable work of saving France; he has in Paris fought and won the great battle against anarchy; he has carried the loans through, reorganized the army and finances of France; he is pushing forward the evacuation of her territory; he maintains order. All this is very fine and grand; he is indeed acting the part of the saviour of his country; but let him not seek to do more; let him not be ambitious to become the founder of a government; let him rather be content with merely playing the first part at the head of affairs.
I thoroughly appreciate the work M. Thiers is engaged in; he directs his policy by the light of present events, the only ones he can control; he is going through the reparative period, but what is he preparing? What is he founding for the future? What heritage will he leave after him, and who will be his heir? Such are the questions which must come up to every reflecting mind, and in particular to his, so remarkably clear, perspicacious, and penetrating.
The weak side of his policy is that it leaves France on a political terra incognita. The creation of a few additional institutions will not suffice to raise France out of the provisional status in which she lies since her fall; I mean such as a vice-presidency, the establishing of a lower house, all which would be adding shadows to shadows. It would never amount to anything more than an administration ad interim, and a period of expectation of a definite, stable, regular government having influence abroad, such an one as France feels that she does not but should possess. The question for M. Thiers, as well as for [pg 480] France and for Europe, remains the same: What is being prepared, what will the future bring?
As we know the tree by its fruits, so do we judge a policy by its results, and so will M. Thiers be judged.
If he leaves after him the heritage of a traditional and representative monarchy, or if, like a second Washington, he leaves as his successor to France a second John Adams or Thomas Jefferson who will enter upon the work of consolidating a republic really conservative, free, Christian, and powerful, he will indeed be a great man; but, if he is to be followed in power by a Gambetta who will be the predecessor of the socialist commune of Paris, he will, notwithstanding the immense services he has rendered, be severely judged by history. No one assuredly ought to understand this better than he.
Is the second President of the fourth or fifth French Republic to be a now unforeseen Jefferson or a Gambetta?
Such is the dreaded question now before us. These threatening eventualities have doubtless been attentively considered at the conference in Berlin. M. von Bismarck may have developed thereat the political plan which I have endeavored to analyze, and which has for its object the founding of the peace of Europe on France's inability to undertake another war; but revolutionary and demagogical France, bearing incendiarism from Paris to Madrid, to Rome, and perhaps elsewhere, must be opposed in some other way than by the establishment of impenetrable frontiers and the formation of alliances; and on these other means of opposition the three emperors must have seriously conferred at Berlin, and I doubt much whether waging war against the Catholic Church has seemed to them the best way to avert the danger aforesaid.