The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1871-02-25 00:00:00

AN OPINION ON NAPOLEON'S
MANIFESTO.

The Paris mespondent of the Da i!y Nvirs thus comments
upon Napoleon's recent manifesto

The proclamation of the ex-Emperor has excited no
feeling but one of disdain. Its presumptuous effrontery
is beyond criticism; its mendacity calculated only to
sink its author lower in the estimation of the nation he
has ruined than he has hitherto fallen. This was
already low enough. The contempt he inspired haa
found ' in lowest depths a deeper still." It is felt that
Louis Napoleon's only becoming course was to observe
silence. His manifesto has been passed over by the
press, almost in silence; but it would not be surprising
if those journals which be nefitted ly hies bounty act the
part of the ass towards the sick lion. It is so easy to
he ungrateful. In accusing the Government for
the National Defence of having brought about
the ruin of Frai cc, he constitutes himself the
echo of Felix P 3 at and crew. On reading such a
phrase as this : "it is time to demand at the
hands of those who have usurped pow, r an account
of the blood shed without neceseity, of the ruins
heaped up without canoe cf the resources of
the country dissipated without centre I ;" one is
tempted seriously to call his sanity in question. He
did more than usurp power. Like a burglar, he broke
into France in the dead of the night, when she was
asleep, peacefully, full of confidence in him into a hose
hands she had entrusted the keys of her house. 111,
indeed, doen it become him to prate about a waste of
the resources of the country in presence of those ter-
rihle itnesses' his war-budgets, which in twenty years
sank 4: 1n0,1100,000 sterling ; paid, nevertheless, as a
sort of premium of insurance against the risks of war,
yet which at the end of that period was represented by
an army of only 250,000 men, not even well equipped,
having scarcely any artillery, and, above ell, being
badly pros i-lotted. Yet less becoming is it in
him to speak of blood unnecessarily spilt, in
the awful presence of the hecatonnbe of dead,
stark and stiff under the sod at Reischoffen,
Wen rib, all over the hillocks and plains Boa valleys
of the Vosges and the Ardennes, and who will
one day rise up in Bolen n judgment against him, and
cry, " Mon art the man I' Did he not feel, know,
that with the disappearance of the smoke from the very
first gun fired at Sabi bruck all hope of vict wy had also
vanished' Yet after this he continued the war. Ile
snivels: over the " unheard-of reverses of France." Ile
it was who paved the way for them. vomits his
bile linen "the . Iverntnt.nt which installed iteelf by
surprise at the de Vide on the 4th of Sistete-
bee." Ile forgets the burglarious surprise of the led Be.
camber. He points to the plebiscites which four times in
twenty yearacoufirmed bun in authority. The faacirukt

now publishing reveal the hollowness of those votes • yet
knowing their real value he appeals to them to entain
his mendaci • theory that he alone SUP, and remains
the 1.10, true elect of the nation. He "pat up prayers
for the success of the national defence, for if the country
wan saved, what mattered the dynasty ?" His pray eta
did not prevent him from plotting with Bazaine for the
surrender of Metz, an a means of gaining grace in the
eyes of Prussia in order to brio g about the restoration
of "the dynasty." He asserts that the desianies o
France cannot be confided to an unauthorized Govern-
ment, which, by disorganizing the administration, has
not left standing one single authority emanating from
univereal suffrage. The administration was found
already dis rgeMzed, and the Government for
the National Defence is bitterly reproached for
not having made a clean weep of all the "au.
thoritite" belonging to it. To wind up—and the
suggestion is indeed a capping of the climax—the ex-
Emperor submits that so long an the nation has not
manifested ita will, his duty is to protect against every-
thing done without its direct participation as illegal.
mate; In cther words, one rock of safety alone remaies
to the natim—hignself. So we are to believe that the
. . .

individusl and the which hive brought the
nation toils present pure, are its sole elements of re-
construction and future prosperity. The paradox is a
madman's. Fortunately the nation is till sane.