The Press. — London, England, 1857-06-27 00:00:00

632 Sovereigns are for marching their swarms of barbarians into the Peninsula—it is not against freedom on the Ebro, or freedom on the Mincio they make war. No, it is against freedom I—against freedom wherever it is to be found—freedom by whomsoever enjoyed—freedom by whatever means achieved, by whatever institutions secured. Freedom is the object of their implacable hate. For its destruction, they are ready to exhaust every resource of force and fraud. All the blessings which it bestows,—all the establishments in which it is embodied, the monu ments that are raised to it, and the suit acles that are wrought by it,—they hate with the malignity of demons, who tremble while they are compelled to adore •, for they quiver by instinct at the sound of its name. And let us not deceive ourselves! These despots can have but little liking towards this nation and its institutions, more especially our Parliament and our Press. As long as England remains unenslared ; as long as the Parliament continues a freo and open tribunal, to which the oppressed of all nations under heaven can appeal against their op- preasors, however mighty and exalted—and with all its abuses (and no man can lament them more than I do, because no man is more sensible of its intrinsic value, which those abuses diminish), with all its imperfections (and no man can be more anxious to remove them, because none wishes more heartily, by restoring its original purity, to make it entirely worthy of the country's love),—it is still far too pure and too free to please the taste of the continental despots—so long must England be the object of their hatred, and of machinations, sometimes carried on covertly, sometimes openly, but always pursued with the same unremitting activity, and pointed to the same end. The editor of this edition does not state, what we know to have been the case, that when the speaker hurled forth the passage, " they hate " with the malignity of demons, who tremble " while they are compelled to adore," the whole House burst forth in a vehement cheer. That speech presents the type in which Lord Brougham's style was cast. He excelled in aggressive and fierce attack. Thus his tone was too often in the key of a tirade, and even this speech on the war with Spain is too like sublime scolding. It is only at rare intervals that such a tone can be endured in the House of Commons. There were angry feelings in the Whig party from 1812 to 1830 ; and their exasperation at any exclusion from power found representative utterance in the burning sarcasms of Lord Brougham. He was, also, a prodigious browbeater; and Sir Robert Peel suffered under him on many occasions, espe cially in the answer to Mr. Peel's charges against the Education Committee, in which Sir (then Mr.) Robert Peel endured a galling castigation. This great reply was delivered off-hand, and without previous preparation, and vastly raised Lord Brougham's fame as a political speaker. There is a vein of con temptuous scorn for the personal character of his ad% ersary, and an adroit insinuation of political Jesuitry, through the whole speech, which galled Sir R. Peel at the time. " I did so and so," said the speaker, " not throughany " apprehension of incurring the right honour " able gentleman's (Mr. Peel's) displeasure, " which never once crossed my mind, and if it " had would have left a very slight impres " sion." We can imagine how Brougham's lips would have delivered such a sentence. And elsewhere he said, " This night has " shown me how meanly I estimated the " inventive subtlety and the unconquerable " pertinacity of polemical malice." And else where, growing still more personal, " His " (Mr. Peel's) objections could not have " originated within these walls. They must " have been gathered from some coarse menu " factory abroad." After that speech Sir R. Peel took special care to leave Mr. Brougham alone. For rich satire, grave irony, and subtle yet popularly effective derision, the annals of ]Parliament contain no superior specimen to Lord Brougham's speech on the " Bed chamber Question" in 1839. It is, indeed, a most masterly piece of prolonged irony, and produced great effect at the time. There are some passages of choice humour in it. Several arch strokes, like the following, might be cited : The meaning of a Ministry resigning now•a-days is that the husbands retire, but leave then wives; half step out, the better halves stay in; and the usual formula, almost a technical expression, used by them that resign, when they say "We only remain in office until our successors can be appointed," must henceforth be understood as signif y ing this—" We only remain in office until our wives and sisters can succeed in pre. venting any successors from being appointed but ourselves." lt, is really a most painful thing to be thus speaking of ladies at all in a public debate, or to discuss a question in which they are mixed up; but their position and their fortunes have become a matter of State. Ladies of the bedchamber ars ppyi made ruOlic functionaries - , they are THE PRESS. henceforth converted into political engines; they are made the very pivot upon which the fate of a Ministry turns. No longer can a Government he formed as the wisdom of Par. liame_t nrescribes ; the ladies of the bedchamber stand in the way of those statesmen to whom the Legislature has given its confidence. Thom, ladies have ceased to be the mere companions of the monarch's social hours ; they are made State engines; they are become statesmen, though not clothed in masculine attire; andtheir power and their persons stand between the desire of Parliament and its gratification. We should like to linger over these speeches, as they call up thronging recollections of days which are yet uuchronicled ; but our space is exhausted. These speeches sell, and find numerous readers. Several editions of them have now been published, and that before us is one of the best of them. Hiatoire de la Chute du Roi Louis Philippe, de la Republique de 1848, et du Retablissement de l' Empire. By M. A. Granier de Cassagnac. Paris : Plon. (Third Notice.) IT has been generally supposed that the coup d'etat of the Prince President, the necessity for which was demonstrated in the preceding article, was kept profoundly secret until the very last moment. But M. Granier de Cas sagnac tells us that this was not the case. " The colonels of the army of Paris," for example, " made known to tue Prince," he says, how much they considered " military dignity" humiliated by the proposition of the Questors of the Assembly to deprive his Im perial Highness of the command of the army, which was solemnly guaranteed to him by the Constitution. In plain English, they incited him to, and expected, a coup-d'etat--a thing which they evidently would not have done if they had not well known that he was disposed to make the attempt. And, besides, General Magnan, Commander-in• Chief of the Army, not only knew some time before it took place that it was coming, but he communicated the " great fact " to generals under his orders some time before : The Commander•in-Chief of the Army of Paris regularly assembled every Thursday the general officers of his army and his division. He was of opinion that a decisive measure was necessary. Without knowing the day, he knew that it was near at hand, and he was resolutely devoted to its accomplishment. On the 26th of November, General Magnan received all the generals of the army of Paris at his house; they were twenty one in number. He then took on himself the grave resolution of making known to them a secret which was not exclusively his own. This confidence, essentially delicate, would have been dangerous if it had not been placed in officers guided by duty and honour. The general•in chief exposed rapidly to his comrades the situation of France, the imperative necessity of saving society menaced by demagogy, the design which he knew the Elect of the People entertained of making a new appeal to national sovereignty, and the confidence which he placed in the army to protect the liberty of the vote against the attack of factions. He made known his firm resolution, for his own part, to engage his full and entire respousi• bility in an enterprise eminently national ; he expressed a hope of being imitated by the generals of the Army of Paris; but he added that, if there were amongst them some who could not conscientiously follow him, he left them the liberty to explain themselves clearly, remarking, however, that he relied on their sense of honour and their probity not to reveal what he had stated. One of the generals, in the name of the rest, declared that, " whatever the hour the Prince " might select, he should find them ready to " respond to his appeal." And then, in French fashion, they threw themselves into each other's arms, and embraced each other : When the emotion was calmed down and silence re. established, General Magnan said, " Let us all swear that not one of us will speak to any one whatsoever of what has taken place between us !" The twenty one generals all took the oath with fervency, and it has been so well kept that we are the first to make known, after the lapse of five years, the ezintenoe and the results of this memorable meeting. The coup•d'etat was fixed for the 2nd of December, and on the previous evening the Prince, as is known, gave a grand party at the Elysee. It has heretofore been alleged that at this party nothing whatever was said or sus pected of the impending coup, but M. de Cas sagnac tells us differently : The open and fierce conflict between the President and the Assembly, excited by the old parties, rendered a crisis more probable, and public opinion anticipated it to be very near at hand. It was spoken of that evening at the Palace of the Presidency as of imminent necessity, and it was spoken of gaily as of an event ou which minds were made op. A southern deputy, M. Pemjoy, asked a writer of his nognaiutitnoe, " When do you mean to kick us out ?" SITU ItDAY, to which the reply was, " Very a9on, I hope !" The Prince showed himself to his guests with the unalterable calm of his mind, and the habitual amenity of his manners. The most attentive observer would not have been able to dis• cover either gloom on his brow or anxiety in his words. The writer then tells the old familiar• tale of how the coup was effected. When the party broke up, General St. Arnaud, Minister of War ; Count de Morny, who was to be made Minister of the Interior ; M. de Maupas, Pre fect of Police ; and Colonel de Beville, an aide-de-camp, assembled in the Prince's study, and, with the Prince, made the final arrangements. Early in the morning, Gene rals Changarnier, Cavaiguac, Bedeau, M. Thiers, and other leading members of the Assembly, together with the more despe rate chiefs of the secret societies and of the clubs, were arrested ; strong bodies of troops were placed in different parts of Paris ; decrees declaring the Assembly dissolved, and making an appeal to the people, and proclamations to the people and the army, were issued ; groups of representatives of the people assembled and attempted to force their way into the Assembly, but were prevented, and, having insisted on meeting at an adjacent niairie, were arrested ; the President of the Assem bly, M. Dupin, displayed greater cowardice than had been expected even from so vile a political intriguer; and the population, though agitated, received on the whole the coup less unfavourably than was to have been expected. In the morning of the 3rd, however, an attempt at armed resistance was made, and barricades were thrown up, but the troops soon " put down " the insurgents. On the following day a more desperate and more formidable rising took place, but it was quelled. The Prince President triumphed. On all these points M. Granier de Cassagnac, contrary to what we had expected, states little that is new ; and, truth to speak, he is not so communicative, nor even so graphic, as Dr. \Term and other writers. He thus corrects a common error : It has been said and printed that the President of the Republic caused twenty million franca (800,0001.) to be taken from the Bank of France to be distributed to the troops on the 2nd December. The truth as to the expenses of the soldiers on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, is much more simple and mnch more noble. When the Prince resclved in the evening of the Ist December on saving society by a decisive measure, there remained to him of all his private fortune and all his patrimony a sum of fifty thwuand francs (2,0001.) He knew that on certain memorable occasions the troops had given way before insurgents from want of provisions—. more famished than vanquished. He took then to the last franc all that remained to him, and charged Colonel Fleury to go from brigade to brigade and to distribute this sum, man by man, to the soldiers who had conquered demagogy. Such were the expenses of the 2nd December. They can, our readers see, be opposed with some advan tage to the accounts of the 24th February, and to those of all the revolutions which have taken place in France. The number of slain and wounded in the combats which the coup-d'etat occasioned in Paris has been greatly, and even scandalously, exaggerated. According to our author the army had 26 killed and 184 wounded; the insurgents 175 killed and 115 wounded. And he contradicts the assertion that after the fight executions of insurgents were made : History, which cannot disdain any calumny, must protest against pretended executions of prisoners said to have been made in the Champ de Mara, or in the forth which surround Paris. The French army was then and always will be what it. was in the time of the Vicomte d'Orthes—it possesses brave soldiers, but no execu tioners. .„ This anecdote is interesting:— As soon as the first faits accomplis bad rendered the measure of the 2nd December irrevocable, the Prince summoned to him all his tried friends. They were M. de Persigny, M. Fould, M. Abatucci. To the latter the Prince said, taking hint by the hand, Cosa fatla—" The thing is done! " - Crushed in Paris, insurrection had no chance of success, and that which broke out in certain departments was, consequently, soon quelled. Then the Prince President promulgated the Constitution which he thought best adapted to France; it was based on that of An VIII., drawn up by the First Napoleon, but was infinitely more liberal. This is our author's version of it : This Constitution establishes a supreme power, which is both legislative and executive, independent in its sphere, but restrained by laws. It consecrates the division of powers, for it recognises a Legislative Body which votes the laws and taxes, and a Senate which watches over, controls, and sanction t4lio vote. It 411411•