replace M. Thiers. He has a monopoly of the necessary reputation. It
is the Empire--the Empire which he always opposed--that has done him
this kindness. For twenty years no great political reputation could
arise in France. The Emperor governed and no one member could show a
capacity for government. M. Rouher, though of vast real ability, was
in the popular idea only the Emperor's agent; and even had it been
otherwise, M. Rouher, the one great man of Imperialism, could not
have been selected as a head of the Government, at a moment of the
greatest reaction against the Empire. Of the chiefs before the
twenty years' silence, of the eminent men known to be able to handle
Parliaments and to govern Parliaments, M. Thiers was the only one
still physically able to begin again to do so. The miracle is, that
at seventy-four even he should still be able. As no other great
chief of the Parliament regime existed, M. Thiers is not only the
best choice, but the only choice. If he were taken away, it would be
most difficult to make any other choice, and that difficulty keeps
him where he is. At every crisis the Assembly feels that after M.
Thiers "the deluge," and he lives upon that feeling. A change of the
President, though legally simple, is in practice all but impossible;
because all know that such a change might be a change, not only of
the President, but of much more too: that very probably it might be
a change of the polity--that it might bring in a Monarchy or an
Empire.

Lastly, by a natural consequence of the position, M. Thiers does not
govern as a Parliamentary Premier governs. He is not, he boasts that
he is not, the head of a party. On the contrary, being the one
person essential to all parties, he selects Ministers from all
parties, he constructs a Cabinet in which no one Minister agrees
with any other in anything, and with all the members of which he