M. Challemel-Lacour is an orator. The Senate was shaken and roused by his earnest appeal. A motion was made that his speech be ordered to be printed and posted on the walls of Paris. But the night came, and with the night the pressure of the powers indicted by the speech, and so no more was heard of it, and the budget of 1890 was voted by the outgoing Chamber, and the incoming Chamber has re-established in it a Secret Service Fund of 1,600,000 francs for the Minister of the Interior--and the work of 'invalidating' the elections of troublesome deputies goes merrily on, and in the remote valleys and hills of France poor village curates are mulcted of half their humble stipends for the offence of calling upon their parishioners to vote for the candidates who do not attack their religion.
From this intolerable position there are two obvious ways of escape. One is the familiar Parisian way of the barricades. That way is not likely to be tried in the interest of liberty or of law. The other is the way which France sought to adopt in the recent elections, of a deliberate Revision of the Constitution, now hopelessly perverted into the instrument of a parliamentary oligarchy. The actual Government has just prevented a Revision in the interest of a Republican Dictator, which after all must have been more or less a leap in the dark out of a window.
As between the only available window and the only available doorway of a dwelling in flames, it is intelligible that an emotional inmate, with the smell of the fire on his garments, should make for the window. But, the window being barred, what should restrain him from walking rationally out of the doorway? Any one of a dozen possible emergencies may compel a Revision of the Constitution--and any Revision of the Constitution now must mean either a Radical revolution, or a restoration of the hereditary Executive. Either of these would be a doorway; for France would know whither either of these must lead. M. Thiers, it is said by persons who ought to be well informed, might have led France thus out of a doorway in 1871, and into a restoration of the Monarchy. M. Thiers was an exceedingly able man, but it is hard to see how he could then have gone about to achieve this result. France in 1871 was still a conquered country occupied by the German armies. The Third Napoleon and his son were both then living. The Comte de Chambord was then in the strength of his years. The Comte de Paris had not then taken the steps which he afterwards took with so much wisdom and moral courage, to make an end of the rupture between Henri V. and the House of Orléans.